Page:Simpson-transcript-redacted.pdf/68

Glenn SimpsonPage 68 originally that caught my attention and became something that, you know, I focused on while other people looked at other things.

So from the very beginning of this organized crime was — Russian organized crime was a focus of interest. I guess I should just repeat, you know, this is a subject that I covered extensively at the Wall Street Journal. I wrote a series of front-page articles about various corrupt politicians from Russia, oligarchs, and one of the things that I wrote about was the connections between western politicians and Russian business figures. So, you know, I was sort of an amateur student of the subject and I had written about some of these same Russian crime figures, you know, years earlier in the U.S. and various frauds and things they were involved in.

As it happens, Felix Sater was, you know, connected to the same Russian crime family that was at issue in the Prevezon case, which is the dominant Russian crime family in Russia and has a robust U.S. presence and is involved in a lot of crime and criminal activity in the United States and for many years was the — the leader of this family was on the FBI most wanted list and lives 1-800-FOR-DEPO