Brazilian prosecutors have filed corruption and money laundering charges against Paul Bragg, the former chief executive officer of Houston-based offshore drilling contractor Vantage Drilling.

Federal prosecutors said in a Thursday night statement that Bragg was involved in the payment of $31 million in bribes to a former executive of state-owned oil company Petrobras.

The statement says the bribe was paid to help Vantage win a $1.8 billion contract in 2009 to charter a drill ship to Petrobras.

The charges against Bragg are part of the probe into the corruption scheme at Petrobras and major construction companies through which kickbacks were paid for government projects.

In the last few years, dozens of politicians and top businessmen have been convicted and jailed.
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A federal grand jury has indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers with conspiracy to hack into Democrat computers during the 2016 presidential election, the latest charges brought against Russian nationals by the special counsel investigating Moscow’s interference.

The indictment charges the operatives with carrying out one of two kinds of the Russian meddling in the contentious election: hacking the email accounts of volunteers and employees of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, including its chairman, and releasing the emails and other documents to the public.

The other aspect of the Russian interference involved a massive influence operation on social media orchestrated by a St. Petersburg-based troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency.

In February, a grand jury indicted 12 of the company’s employees and its financial backer.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the latest charges Friday.

“The blame for election interference belongs to the criminals who committed election interference,” Rosenstein said at a press conference. “We need to work together to hold the perpetrators accountable, and keep moving forward to preserve our values, protest against future interference, and defend America.” 

The Russian operatives worked for two special units of Russia’s military intelligence agency known as GRU and used a variety of techniques to gain access to the Democratic computers, according to the 29-page indictment.

“The units engaged in active cyberoperations to interfere in the 2016 presidential election,” Rosenstein said. “One GRU unit worked to steal information, while another unit worked to disseminate stolen information.”

Starting as early as March 2016, the Russians hacked into Clinton campaign accounts, according to the indictment. By April, the operatives also had intruded into the computer networks of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee. 

“The Conspirators covertly monitored the computers of dozens of DCCC and DNC employees, implanted hundreds of files containing malicious computer code [“malware”], and stole emails and other documents from the DCCC and DNC,” the indictment says. 

By July, the Russians, using fictitious online personas, including DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, released tens of thousands of the stolen emails and documents from the Clinton campaign and the two Democratic committees, according to the indictment.

The charges come on the eve of a highly-anticipated summit Monday between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. Trump said at a news conference Friday that he’ll “absolutely ask” Putin about the Russian interference in the U.S. election.

Rosenstein said he briefed Trump on the allegations earlier this week.

“The president is fully aware of today’s actions by the Department,” he said.

Rosenstein said that while the Russian aim was to influence the elections, “there is no allegation that the conspiracy altered the vote count or changed any election result.”

The indictment names all 12 agents engaged in the conspiracy, including Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, who headed the GRU unit responsible for hacking the Democratic accounts. The commanding officer of the second unit, which helped release the stolen documents through DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0, is identified as Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk. 

Eleven agents are charged with conspiring to hack computers, steal documents and release them in an effort to influence the election.

The 12th is charged with “conspiring to infiltrate computers of organizations responsible for administering elections, including state boards of election, secretaries of state, and companies that supply software and other technology used to administer elections,” Rosenstein said.
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President Donald Trump said the U.S. would “probably not” strike a trade deal with Britain if Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan went ahead as planned. 

“If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the U.K., so it will probably kill the deal,” Trump told The Sun, a conservative British newspaper.

Trump said May had ignored his advice on how to negotiate Britain’s exit from the European Union.  “I would have done it much differently,” Trump said of May’s Brexit plan. “I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didn’t listen to me.”

Trump said May’s so-called soft-Brexit approach went “the opposite way” to what he had recommended and that it was “very unfortunate.”

May’s proposal was finalized Friday. It was quickly followed by the resignation of two members of her Cabinet, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis, who did not approve of her approach.

In the exclusive interview with The Sun, Trump also said that Johnson would make a “great prime minister,” adding, “I think he’s got what it takes.”

The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a close ally of the president’s, who also owns Fox News Network, Trump’s favorite U.S. TV channel.
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Jehovah’s Witnesses have a long history of being persecuted around the world. Their activities are banned or restricted in several countries. They are considered an extremist organization in Russia, while their members are imprisoned in South Korea and Eritrea. Even near their main headquarters and publishing house in New York state, Jehovah’s Witnesses lead a somewhat secluded life. VOA’s Anush Avetisyan has the story.
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Senior officials from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration are set to embark on the first talks with Mexico President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his team, days after the leftist won a landslide election to a six-year term.

On Friday, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen start talks with counterparts in Mexico City.

In his first trip to Mexico as the top U.S. diplomat, “Secretary Pompeo will reaffirm the U.S. partnership with Mexico to combat transnational criminal organizations,” address the opioid epidemic, discuss “efforts to enhance trade, curb irregular migration and manage our shared border,”  a senior State Department official said Thursday in a phone briefing.

U.S. officials will meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, Lopez Obrador and Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray Caso. A press conference at Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be held, according to the State Department.

The high-profile meetings come amid strained relations between the neighboring countries over illegal migration, border security and trade negotiations.

To curb the influx of migrants — mostly from Central America — that journey through Mexico and cross illegally into the U.S., the two countries are said to be in discussion about a so-called “safe third country” agreement.

A “safe third country” deal between Mexico and the U.S. would require asylum seekers from Central America to apply for protection in Mexico rather than at the U.S. border.

When asked if Washington would consider providing Mexico financial aid as an incentive and to help the country settle new asylum seekers, the senior State Department official told VOA that “migration issues are an incredibly important and complex issue” that the Trump administration is addressing. He said the Department of Homeland Security was taking the lead on such discussions.

In a statement, the DHS said migrant flows are a shared responsibility among nations in Latin America, and that Washington is working with regional governments to “find options for these individuals to remain within or closer to their countries of origin.”

Critics warned such an agreement could put migrants fleeing violence in further danger.  

“The notion that Mexico is in any way safe for Central American asylum seekers is preposterous,” Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the advocacy group Legal Aid Justice Center told VOA on Thursday.

“I have had countless Central American clients, mostly women, tell me that the treatment they received in Mexico — whether by the cartels, or the government, or both — was nearly as bad as the violence they were fleeing in their home countries,” he added.

Mexico officials have said the best way to tackle issues related to illegal migration and border security is to “spur development in Mexico.”

Wednesday, the State Department’s acting deputy assistant secretary on Western Hemisphere affairs, Kenneth Merten, told U.S. lawmakers that Washington is working with Mexico in tackling pressing issues through aid programs.

“Our assistance programs in the region seek to support rule of law and governance, and to make these countries better places to live, better places to do business, and thus ultimately reduce migration,” Merten said during a hearing Wednesday of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Pompeo will also discuss “continued U.S.-Mexico cooperation with the Nieto administration throughout the transition” and work closely with Lopez Obrador to continue strengthening the U.S.-Mexico relationship after the new administration takes office on December 1, said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert. 
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President Donald Trump’s criticism of Germany’s involvement in a natural gas pipeline deal with Russia launched a tense two days of NATO meetings in Brussels — but it also may have set the tone for the U.S. leader’s highly anticipated summit with his Russian counterpart Monday in Helsinki.

In a taut exchange with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday, Trump said Nord Stream 2 — an offshore pipeline that would deliver gas to Germany directly from Russia via the Baltic Sea — leaves the Western military alliance’s largest and wealthiest European member “totally controlled” by and “captive to” Russia.

“We’re supposed to protect you against Russia but [Germany is] paying billions of dollars to Russia, and I think that’s very inappropriate,” Trump told Stoltenberg.

According to the U.S. leader, Germany “got rid of their coal plants, got rid of their nuclear, they’re getting so much of the oil and gas from Russia. I think it’s something NATO has to look at.”

As Europe’s biggest natural gas consumer, Germany relies on Russia for roughly half of its gas imports, which account for 20 percent of its current energy mix, according to London-based Marex Spectron group. The International Energy Association projects German natural gas demand to increase by 1 percent in the next five years, as Berlin continues phasing out its nuclear power plants by 2022.

Expanding upon the existing Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which has been transporting gas from Russia to Germany along the same Baltic Sea route since 2011, Nord Stream 2, currently slated for completion by 2019, would roughly double Russia’s export volume.

Trump says the $11 billion, 800-mile pipeline expansion linking Russia and Germany would give Moscow greater geopolitical leverage over Europe at a time of heightened international tensions, an opinion in keeping with that of his his immediate predecessor, former President Barack Obama, and former President George W. Bush, who opposed Nord Stream 1.

The administrations have long pushed for Germany, Europe’s largest energy consumer, to buy American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in an attempt to overtake a sector of the market long dominated by Russian distribution routes that run through Ukraine.

Poland and Lithuania, who are among Nord Stream 2’s most vociferous European critics, have built LNG terminals that would stand to profit from an American takeover of the market. But other former Soviet satellite nations — such as Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia — have long warned that a growing reliance on Russian energy not only compromises European security, but rewards Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and other campaigns to destabilize the European Union.

There have been numerous price disputes between Moscow and Kyiv over natural gas deliveries to Ukraine, whose pipelines serve other European nations. In 2009, a disagreement between the two nations cut natural gas supplies to Western Europe in the middle of winter, leaving many without heat.

Nord Stream 2, they argue, will not only deprive land-transit countries such as Poland and Ukraine of billions in annual transit fees, it will also give Russia a way to penalize Eastern European foes without sacrificing lucrative deals further to the west.

According to Atlantic Council energy expert Agnia Grigas, Nord Stream 2 contradicts the EU’s official energy security strategy, which calls on EU nations to diversify energy sources, distributors and routes.

“If Nord Stream 2 is built, Germany would be the EU country most exposed to dubious Russian influence,” Grigas recently reported. “Moscow already has a track record of relying on German businesses and lawmakers to advance its own strategic goals. For instance, following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, large German companies with considerable business ties with Russia were among the harshest critics of Western sanctions against Moscow.”

As a private project backed by energy giants such as Shell — a British-Dutch multinational — Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper, along with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, Nord Stream 2 is also being financed by private firms from Austria, France and Britain, but not by German tax funds.

In responding to Trump’s Wednesday tirade against Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she knew all too well from her childhood in the East what it is like to live under Soviet control. But she said energy deals with Russia do not make 21st-century Berlin beholden to Moscow.

“I am very happy that today we are united in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of that, we can say that we can make our independent policies and make independent decisions,” she said.

Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, a longtime friend of Putin, has championed the Nord Stream enterprise since just before being voted out of office in 2005. He soon went on to lead the shareholder committee of Nord Stream AG, a consortium for construction and operation of the submarine pipeline, eventually going on to become chairman of the Kremlin-controlled Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil company.

In March, European politicians increased calls for sanctions against the ex-chancellor for representing Russian interests, though his name has yet to appear on any lists of individuals targeted for sanctions.

Despite repeated U.S. warnings that companies involved in the deal also risk being slapped with sanctions, Nord Stream 2 is scheduled for completion next year.

This story originated in VOA’s Russian service. 
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