Page:Simpson-transcript-redacted.pdf/244

Glenn SimpsonPage 244 I looked at the Russian pension system to determine if, in fact, the Russian government was distributing lots of pension payments to Russian immigrants in the United States, and I found some reports from the Social Security Administration and other places describing this system.

Basically because everyone in Russia, you know, more or less works for the government, there's a lot of — there's a large number of Russian emigres in the United States who receive pension payments that are paid through the embassies and various people, Russian lawyers and others who we became interested in in the course of this investigation seem to be involved in that process. I'm not saying they did anything illegal. I'm just saying, you know, we looked at this system, and as someone who does a lot of money laundering work this was an interesting thing that I hadn't heard about.

There's all this money flowing in the United States from Russia, it probably flows in under some sort of diplomatic status. So if there's sanctions on Russia and the Russians can't move money in the United States for most things, this would, in fact, be an ideal mechanism for moving money into the 1-800-FOR-DEPO