REGISTRATION: Bette's Sunday Speakeasy Martin Sheil on 'Russian Tsarship, Who's Next?'
Bette members—please register for our Speakeasy with retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil on how Putin can't live forever and his bets on who's next
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“The true Russian bear that has haunted each of the Russian political leaders of the last century has been the personal ambition for power and greed that has gripped each successive leader and led to their self-destruction.”—Martin Sheil
After a stunning, three-part Bette series on Money Laundering 101, I am pleased to inform our members that I am bringing back retired IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil for our Sunday Speakeasy on May 24, 11 am Pacific, to discuss his latest substack post: Russian Tsarship, Who’s Next?
The topic is timely as my intelligence sources say Putin has real concerns to be worried about a potential coup or assassination attempt.
Here is an excerpt from Marty’s post:
So, who can reconcile the competing power blocs in Russia and step up to lead the wounded Communist state out of an economic abyss and take firm control of the feared Russian Intelligence agencies, as well as the Nationalist military leaders and competing oligarchs who have so exploited Russian mineral wealth to enrich themselves to the detriment of the proud, hard-working Russian people?
Here are my nominees:
1. Igor Sechin - CEO of Rosneft and ex-Chief of Staff to Vladimir Putin. Sechin leads the largest petro company in Russia and maintains deep industry contacts in Saudi Arabia and UAE, as well as Venezuela, et al. Sechin knows the petro industry and all the players, as well as the leading figures in Russian Intelligence, and is a known commodity to the Russian financial elite.
2. Alexey Miller – CEO of Gazprom. Miller brings to the table all of the same attributes as Sechin. Gazprom is a corporate behemoth within Russia that is a force to be reckoned with.
3. Nikolai Patrushev, or his son. The elephant in the room, make that every room in Russia when discussing any Russian succession plan, has to be the pervasive dominance and power of the Russian Intelligence agencies, e.g., the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the GRU, who monitor and control every facet of Russian civilian life from elections to the daily propaganda and disinformation fed to the public by State-controlled media. Patrushev headed up all Russian Intelligence at one point wherein Putin reported to Patrushev. Nothing happens in Russia that Patrushev does not know about. The Patrushev family are the beneficial owners of an offshore shell company located in BVI.
4. Alexander Bortnikov – current head of the FSB.
5. Aleksey Dyumin – recent leader of the GRU and former personal Putin bodyguard who allegedly protected Putin from being attacked by a brown bear, or so the story goes.
The true Russian bear that has haunted each of the Russian political leaders of the last century has been the personal ambition for power and greed that has gripped each successive leader and led to their self-destruction.
Putin is no different. Vlad is one of, if not THE, richest individual on the planet Earth. Putin’s mafia leadership of Russia and his ambition to pursue a Novorossiya (New Russia) and an empire similar in geography and reach to the old Soviet Union ended in a military stalemate at the Donbas, but impoverished the Russian military and national economy, in turn, inevitably leading to his inevitable personal demise.
Who will replace him?
Some suggestions have been made in the above narrative, someone with the political skills and instincts to subvert Russian Intelligence and the Russian military industrial complex to their individual political leadership while presiding over and reviving the petro economy and successfully controlling the contemporary Boyars (oligarchs) of the Russian economic elite will emerge. A final nominee supported by this narrative to emerge to lead the Novorossiya Tsarship is a familiar name to global geopolitics, Kirill Dmitriev. Putin directed Dmitriev to lead the Russian ceasefire negotiating team. Dmitriev is the head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund, also known as the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and a darling of the Davos global elite.
Dmitriev is a known commodity to Trump, having sat down for one beer in the Seychelles Islands with Trump emissary and Blackwater Founder, Erik Prince, to discuss Russia-Iran relations in 2016.
Martin J. Sheil
Please join us on Sunday, and if you are not yet a paid member, please consider upgrading.
More about Martin Sheil here:
Martin J. Sheil is a retired supervisory agent for IRS Criminal Investigation with 30 years experience, including service as coordinator of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) for the Gulf Coast Region, Branch Chief for the North Texas District (Dallas), Special Agent in Charge for the South Texas District (San Antonio) and as Director of IRS CI Asset Forfeiture in Washington, D.C. Sheil supervised the largest most successful undercover money laundering operation ever conducted against organized prostitution called Operation Outcall.
After retirement from the IRS, he was hired as a contractor by Deloitte to work a contract between Deloitte and OCDETF — Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces — which led to Sheil being embedded in DEA offices in Chicago with the one-line mission objective to follow Cartel money wherever it took him for the purposes of seizing and forfeiting to the Feds as much drug money as possible.
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