US Real Estate
July 1st, 2010 • Business
Russian Spies Had U.S. Real Estate Connections. The FBI arrested 11 alleged Russian spies this week. They had been operating as a gang for 10 years – but all the FBI has charged them with, so far, is money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents. Two of them had connections with legitimate real estate organizations in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, according to FBI and court files that are growing daily in Washington and New York.
They haven’t been answerable with espionage – which is what absolute spies, as in James Bond, John LeCarre and Tom Clancy, are declared to undertake. Their orders from Moscow were to uncover, abduct and address nuclear weapons analysis to the Kremlin. They weren’t alike close, according to the best advice filed so far by the Justice Dept.
The unfolding drama is a huge embarrassment to Presidents Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Premier Dimitry Medvedev.