{"id":210748,"date":"2020-07-22T07:48:58","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T07:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=210748"},"modified":"2020-07-24T07:00:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T07:00:40","slug":"alleged-salas-family-assailant-previously-worked-for-us-israeli-intelligence-linked-firm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=210748","title":{"rendered":"Alleged Salas Family Assailant Previously Worked for US\/Israeli Intelligence-Linked Firm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whitney Webb \u2013 Unlimited Hangout July 21, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The news of the shooting of the husband and son of Esther Salas, the judge recently assigned to oversee the Jeffrey Epstein \u2013 Deutsche Bank case, caused shock and confusion while also bringing renewed scrutiny to the Epstein scandal just a week after Epstein\u2019s main co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, was denied bail in a separate case.<\/span><\/p>\n

The case Salas is set to oversee is a class action lawsuit\u00a0brought by Deutsche Bank investors<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0who allege that Deutsche Bank \u201cfailed to properly monitor customers that the Bank itself deemed to be high risk, including, among others, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.\u201d The case came after the New York state Department of Financial Services had settled with Deutsche Bank over the bank\u2019s failure to cut ties with Epstein-linked accounts, resulting in Deutsche Bank\u00a0paying a $150 million fine<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. Deutsche Bank, unlike other financial institutions, failed to close all of its accounts linked to Epstein until less than a month prior to his arrest last year, even though the bank had identified him as \u201chigh risk\u201d\u00a0years <\/em>before.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the tragedy of Sunday\u2019s shooting, which claimed the life of Salas\u2019 only child,\u00a0the quick discovery<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0of the death of\u00a0the main suspect<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, Roy Den Hollander, of a \u201cself-inflicted\u201d gunshot to the head before he could be arrested or questioned by authorities has led to speculation that there is more to the official narrative of the crime than meets the eye.<\/span><\/p>\n

With law enforcement sources now claiming that Esther Salas was not the intended target of the attack and some media reports now suggesting that Den Hollander\u2019s motive was related to his dislike of feminism, it appears there are efforts underway to distance Sunday\u2019s tragic shooting from Salas\u2019 recent assignment to the Epstein case, which occurred\u00a0just four days<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>before the tragic shooting.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most likely reason for any such \u201cdamage control\u201d effort lies in the fact that both U.S. law enforcement investigations and mainstream media reports have consistently downplayed the connections of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s sexual trafficking and financial crimes to intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Israel. Similarly, Roy Den Hollander previously worked for a New York firm has been described as a \u201cprivate CIA\u201d with ties to those countries\u2019 intelligence agencies and, also, ties to Deutsche Bank.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Private CIA<\/h2>\n

According to\u00a0his website<\/strong><\/span>,<\/a>\u00a0Den Hollander once worked for Kroll Associates Moscow Office, where he \u201cmanaged and upgraded Kroll\u2019s delivery of intelligence and security in the former Soviet Union\u201d from 1999 to 2000. A few years prior, Kroll\u00a0had won<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0a considerable bid from the Russian government to locate money allegedly \u201cspirited out of the country by the directors of state enterprises when they realized that privatization was inevitable.\u201d The Kroll executives in charge of the Russian portfolio prior to Den Hollander were E. Norbett Garrett, a former CIA station chief in Cairo and Kuwait, and Joseph Rosetti, former chief of security for IBM. During that period and prior to his hiring at Kroll, Den Hollender worked as a lawyer in Russia regarding \u201clegal and business issues, including international financing and marketing\u201d and married a Russian woman he met during his time there that he subsequently claimed was part of the \u201cRussian mafia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Founded by Jules Kroll in 1972, Kroll Associates would later become known as the \u201cCIA of Wall Street\u201d and \u201cWall Street\u2019s Private Eye\u201d and was alleged to be an actual front for the CIA by French intelligence agencies, according to\u00a0the Washington Post<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/a>. Part of the reason for this nickname, which was once a boasting point for top Kroll executives, owes to the fact that the firm frequently hired former CIA and FBI officers, as well as\u00a0former members<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0of MI6 and Mossad. K2 Intelligence, the successor to Kroll Associates founded by Jules Kroll and his son Jeremy in 2009,\u00a0has similar hiring practices<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, counting former FBI and NSA officials among its ranks alongside former high-ranking members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet, Israel\u2019s domestic intelligence agency. Kroll also boasted ties to the Bush family, with Jonathan Bush (George Bush Sr.\u2019s brother) serving on its\u00a0corporate advisory board<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, and Kroll was also employed by Bill Clinton\u2019s first presidential campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though it is mainly involved in corporate security and investigations, Kroll has also\u00a0frequently investigated<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0targets of Washington foreign policy, including Saddam Hussein, and was also the company tapped to \u201creorganize\u201d Enron in 2002. Kroll Associates also has long been a subject of scrutiny for those that question the official narrative on the attacks of September 11, 2001, given that the company was put in charge of security for the World Trade Center complex from 1993 bombing up through the 2001 attacks and has no shortage of ties to companies and individuals that profited from the attacks. Kroll itself experienced a \u201csurge in business<\/a>\u201d following the events of 9\/11, a day when its top executives all avoided going to work despite ostensibly providing security for the complex.<\/span><\/p>\n

A similar \u201csurge in business\u201d for Kroll followed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq after the company\u2019s investigations into Saddam Hussein\u2019s and the Bath Party\u2019s finances had been used as partial justification for the military incursion. Kroll became a major provider of mercenaries along with companies like Blackwater and DynCorp to the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation through its subsidiary\u00a0<\/strong>Kroll Security International. Its\u00a0clients included<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/a>the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which\u00a0has long fronted<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0for the CIA, and also\u00a0provided mercenaries<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0for the war in Afghanistan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kroll executives over the years have commented to the press on their reputation as a \u201cprivate CIA\u201d and have also noted the advantages of being a \u201cprivate\u201d as opposed to \u201cpublic\u201d intelligence agency. For instance, E. Norbett Garrett, the former CIA official turned Kroll executive,\u00a0told\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/em>in 2009 the following:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGarrett explained the disparity between what Kroll could do and what the C.I.A. could in a place like Sudan. \u201cThey have to rely on public and covert sources,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we can go straight to Salah Idris. He\u2019s our client, after all. We can go straight to his friends. We can be manipulated, of course, shown incomplete information, and sometimes we have to walk away from a case if we don\u2019t trust somebody. But we definitely have some advantages.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Kroll Associates and the Epstein Network<\/h2>\n

Aside from Kroll Associates\u2019 own role as a private intelligence firm, it is also worth pointing out that Jules Kroll had an odd meeting with Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell\u2019s father, shortly before his death, alleged by most Maxwell biographers and his family to have been a homicide. Roughly two weeks before his death, Kroll met with Maxwell at New York\u2019s Helmsley Palace Hotel. According to a\u00a01992 article in\u00a0Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span>, \u201cMaxwell had ushered Kroll and two other men out onto the patio so that their conversation could not be overheard or bugged,\u201d with Maxwell allegedly seeking to hire Kroll to uncover \u201cpeople out to get him, to destroy his empire, to cripple him financially, and to destroy his life and business in any way they could.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The article further notes that \u201cthe meeting broke up with Maxwell\u2019s promising that he would send Kroll what he called \u201ca memorandum of suspicions and unexplained events.\u201d \u201cMaxwell was working on this compendium,\u201d said the\u00a0\u00a0[anonymous] participant [in the meeting], \u201cwhen he met his death.\u201d Kroll Associates was never formally hired.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Much more recently Kroll came under scrutiny\u00a0after being hired by<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0disgraced media mogul Harvey Weinstein alongside the \u201cprivate Mossad for hire\u201d firm Black Cube. Weinstein had\u00a0been instructed to hire<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0Black Cube by Ehud Barak, the former Israeli military intelligence head and Israeli Prime Minister with close ties to Jeffrey Epstein and a frequent visitor of Epstein\u2019s residences. Weinstein hired Kroll to harass and cyberstalk women who had accused him of sexual assault. Weinstein was a one-time\u00a0business partner<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/a>of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s and the testimony of Epstein victim Maria Farmer strongly implies that Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein \u201cshared\u201d women, and potentially underage girls, with the film producer.\u00a0The Daily Beast<\/strong><\/span><\/em>\u00a0later reported<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0that Epstein had used his ties to Weinstein to impress and recruit potential victims and at least one of those victims landed a role in a film produced by a Weinstein-owned company due to Epstein\u2019s ties to Weinstein.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, Kroll\u2019s long-time executive Vice President for Operations, James Bucknam, was previously\u00a0chief adviser<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0to former FBI director Louis Freeh and is\u00a0now CEO<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0of the Freeh Group. Freeh has since become notorious for having been hired by Epstein associate, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, to \u201cinvestigate<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u201d the Epstein scandal, and was\u00a0also involved in the cover-up<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>of the Penn State child molestation and abuse scandal. Freeh was also director of the FBI when the Bureau declined to investigate accusations regarding Leslie Wexner, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein and their involvement in the sex trafficking of minors, first reported to the FBI in 1996 by Maria Farmer.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Kroll \u2013 Deutsche Bank \u201cRevolving Door\u201d<\/h2>\n

After \u201cretiring\u201d from Kroll associates, Jules Kroll\u00a0created<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0a credit-rating agency, a field he had called just years earlier \u201ca heck of a racket.\u201d Named the Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA), the firm\u00a0was envisioned by Kroll<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>as a \u201ccredit-rating agency on steroids,\u201d but has failed to make a dent in the market shares of the so-called \u201cBig Three\u201d credit-rating agencies: Standard & Poor\u2019s, Moody\u2019s Investors Service, and Fitch Ratings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though it hasn\u2019t managed to become a dominant force in credit ratings, KBRA has managed to be profitable and to have produced something of a \u201crevolving door\u201d between its senior management and Deutsche Bank executives. For instance, KBRA\u2019s top executive in Europe, Mauricio No\u00e9, had previously been a\u00a0Managing Director<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0of Deutsche Bank\u2019s London branch. In another example, Vice President for Credit Structuring at Deutsche Bank in New York, Ian Ross, was\u00a0previously employed<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>by KBRA and Yee Cent Wong, managing director of KBRA for CMBS,\u00a0was previously<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0Vice President of the Credit Solutions Group at Deutsche Bank Securities. Another managing director of KBRA,\u00a0Bill Baneky<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, had previously served as Deutsche Bank\u2019s Vice President and National Relationship Manager. One of KBRA\u2019s senior managing directors, Rosemary Kelley, is also a\u00a0former Deutsche Bank Vice President<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, while another,\u00a0Ken Kockenmeister<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, was Deutsche Bank\u2019s Director for Large Loan Securitization and Underwriting.<\/span><\/p>\n

While they may not be the \u201cbiggest\u201d credit-rating agency, KBRA analysts and executives frequently speak to media outlets where they comment on the state of various businesses, Deutsche Bank among them. Given the amount of overlap between Deutsche Bank and KBRA, it is unsurprising that KBRA has lobbied in the press on Deutsche\u2019s behalf. For instance, KBRA analyst Christopher Whalen\u00a0told\u00a0Business Insider<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0in 2016 that\u00a0<\/em>\u201cThe problem with Deutsche Bank may be the end of Merkel\u2019s career,\u201d adding that \u201cThe question is does she want to be remembered for\u00a0doing the right thing \u2014 which is to provide support for the bank and diffuse the situation<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 or does she want to be remembered for standing by when one of the largest banks in Europe failed?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s Links to Deutsche Bank<\/h2>\n

Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s ties to Deutsche Bank go back decades, and potentially earlier. After working for Bear Stearns earlier in his career and then as a so-called \u201cfinancial bounty hunter\u201d with ties to intelligence-linked arms dealers and Wall Street, Epstein set up a Ponzi scheme with Steve Hoffenberg called Tower Financial, which collapsed in 1993 and subsequently landed Hoffenberg 20 years in prison. Epstein\u2019s name, despite being a clear co-conspiractor, was suspiciously dropped from the case during the trial. Hoffenberg subsequently alleged that Epstein used his ill-gotten gains from Tower Financial alongside a series of suspect loans from Deutsche Bank to create his investment company.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hoffenberg subsequently\u00a0told\u00a0The Observer<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0the following:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHis lead bank is Deutsche Bank, Germany, that runs the lead on his financial trust company. They run the platform in the trading of the currencies for Epstein and with Epstein. He\u2019s never disclosed to the investors that provide the money to Deutsche Bank his true legacy, that\u2019s securities fraud.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Following that point, Epstein\u2019s financial activities, aside from his Deutsche Bank-enabled investment vehicle, were publicly conducted through Bear Stearns (until its 2008 collapse) and J.P. Morgan. When J.P. Morgan dropped Epstein as a client, he again turned to Deutsche Bank in 2013, becoming a client of the bank\u2019s private wealth division in New York. Anti-money laundering compliance officers at the bank\u2019s branches in New York and Florida\u00a0subsequently flagged<\/strong><\/span><\/a>Epstein\u2019s accounts in 2015, in 2016 and again in 2019, creating suspicious activity reports regarding the movements of large amounts of funds tied to Epstein-linked accounts outside of the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the bank\u00a0did not fully terminate their relationship with Epstein<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0until\u00a0June 2019<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, just a few weeks prior to his arrest last year. Epstein was believed to have dozens of accounts with the bank at one point and those accounts were shut down slowly\u00a0over a period of several months<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0beginning in late 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ties that Bind<\/h2>\n

The narrative emerging that Den Hollander was motivated to kill Esther Salas\u2019 husband and sons due to his hatred of feminism is a rapid attempt to explain away a story that clearly warrants further investigation, albeit into avenues that mainstream media and powerful individuals in the public and private sectors prefer remain untouched.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the heinous act targeting the Salas family has shown, individuals with a lot to lose are willing to go to the farthest extremes to keep the ties of Epstein to the financial sector and to intelligence out of sight and out of mind. Indeed, just last December, Epstein\u2019s\u00a0personal banker<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>at Deutsche Bank, Thomas Bowers, the chief of Deutsche Bank\u2019s Private Wealth Management division in New York from 2012 to 2015, was found dead in his home. His death was quickly ruled a suicide by hanging. Bowers\u00a0had also signed off on \u201cunorthodox\u201d loans<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, not just for Epstein, but Donald Trump, who has his own ties to the Epstein scandal.<\/span><\/p>\n

While some have been quick to point out that Trump (as well as his son-in-law Jared Kushner) could stand to lose from potential revelations in the Epstein-Deutsche Bank trial, there are other key power-brokers tied to both Epstein and Deutsche Bank who could also be feeling the heat. For instance, Lynn Forester de Rothschild, who became close to Epstein in the early 1990s and\u00a0subsequently connected him to the Clinton White House<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0later to Alan Dershowitz<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, is\u00a0intimately involved<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0in the Deutsche Bank Microfinance Consortium.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aside from Epstein\u2019s use of the money, Deutsche Bank has been notorious for years as a cesspool of\u00a0money laundering<\/strong><\/span> <\/a>for organized crime networks,\u00a0paying $14.5 billion in fines<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>in just seven years for official action taken against the bank by several governments. It is highly likely that the brutality of what happened outside the Salas family home on Sunday is more related to Deutsche Bank than Epstein, as numerous powerful individuals have ties to the embattled bank.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even the recent move by Attorney General William Barr to remove SDNY District Attorney Geoffrey Berman from his post appears to be more related to Berman\u2019s efforts to investigate Deutsche Bank than the Epstein scandal, as some have alleged. This is because Barr\u2019s new pick for Berman\u2019s old job counts Deutsche Bank among his former clients and\u00a0notably defended the bank<\/strong><\/span><\/a>\u00a0in a recent anti-money laundering probe, whereas Berman was investigating the bank (albeit for political reasons that took aim at the bank\u2019s dealings with Trump).<\/span><\/p>\n

While Epstein\u2019s egregious and criminal actions targeting minors have now become public knowledge, in role in facilitating white collar crime, money laundering and financial frauds on behalf of corporations, governments and oligarchs remains sorely under-covered, despite his role in such activities preceding and continuing after his involvement in an intelligence-linked sexual blackmail operation.<\/span><\/p>\n

It arguably remains one of the key components of the Epstein scandal, yet the most poorly understood and most under-investigated. If anything, the tragic events at the Salas family home on Sunday, and what appears to be a rapid yet shoddy cover-up of the shooter\u2019s ties to Kroll Associates and actual motives, reveal that Epstein\u2019s financial ties are more frightening to certain powerful individuals and institutions than his trove of sexual blackmail.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alleged killer of the son of the judge assigned to Epstein case, previously worked for a company tied to U.S.\/Israeli intelligence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=210748"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210774,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210748\/revisions\/210774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=210748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=210748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=210748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}