"While organizations in the United States received the largest share of attacks, targeted victims span at least 24 countries. At least a quarter of the targeted organizations were involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work. Nobelium, originating from Russia, is the same actor behind the attacks on SolarWinds customers in 2020. These attacks appear to be a continuation of multiple efforts by Nobelium to target government agencies involved in foreign policy as part of intelligence gathering efforts," Microsoft explained. Microsoft believes the attacks are notable for three reasons. "First, when coupled with the attack on SolarWinds, it's clear that part of Nobelium's playbook is to gain access to trusted technology providers and infect their customers. By piggybacking on software updates and now mass email providers, Nobelium increases the chances of collateral damage in espionage operations and undermines trust in the technology ecosystem," Microsoft argued. "Second, perhaps unsurprisingly, Nobelium's activities and that of similar actors tend to track with issues of concern to the country from which they are operating. This time Nobelium targeted many humanitarian and human rights organizations. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Russian actor Strontium targeted healthcare organizations involved in vaccines. In 2019, Strontium targeted sporting and anti-doping organizations. And we've previously disclosed activity by Strontium and other actors targeting major elections in the U.S. and elsewhere," Microsoft explained. "This is yet another example of how cyberattacks have become the tool of choice for a growing number of nation-states to accomplish a wide variety of political objectives, with the focus of these attacks by Nobelium on human rights and humanitarian organizations." "Third, nation-state cyberattacks aren't slowing. We need clear rules governing nation-state conduct in cyberspace and clear expectations of the consequences for violation of those rules. We must continue to rally around progress made by the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, and more widely adopt the recommendations of the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, and the CyberPeace Institute. But, we need to do more. Microsoft will continue to work with willing governments and the private sector to advance the cause of digital peace," Microsoft vowed.<doc-sep>The Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, has been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in New York, ABC News has confirmed. Weisselberg’s name came up earlier this week on an audio recording that captured then-nominee Donald Trump talking with his former attorney Michael Cohen about a payment to acquire the rights to the story of a former Playboy model who had claimed she and Trump had an affair, which the Trump campaign later denied. On the recording, Cohen is heard saying "I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up…" Later in the recording, Cohen is heard reminding Trump he "spoke with Allen" about the financing of the payment to the publisher of the National Enquirer for the rights to Karen McDougal’s story. Weisselberg is one of Trump’s longest-serving employees and intimately familiar with the Trump Organization’s financial transactions. Word of his subpoena to testify before a grand jury that is deciding whether to return an indictment against Cohen was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The timing of the subpoena and testimony was not made clear. Prosecutors in the US Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York have been investigating Cohen for months, though he has not been charged with any crime and has repeatedly denied any wrong doing. The New York investigation into Cohen came after prosecutors on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team alerted the Department of Justice to evidence related to Cohen that would fit more into the jurisdiction of the New York Southern District, and less so into the special counsel's purview. Reached by ABC News, the Trump Organization declined to comment. The US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which is leading the criminal investigation of Cohen, declined to comment. Weisselberg was deposed last year by the New York attorney general’s office for its separate civil lawsuit against the Trump Foundation for potential fraud. A portion of the transcript makes clear Weisselberg’s loyalty to Trump: "It doesn’t matter what I thought. He’s my boss. I went." Weisselberg has been a fixture within the Trump Organization for decades and worked for the president's father, Fred Trump, before ultimately joining the Trump Organization. He is looked at as the gate keeper to all financial data for the president, his family and the company they run. He was one of a few select aides that was featured in an episode of Trump's "The Apprentice" during an early season of the show.<doc-sep>Allen Weisselberg, a longtime financial gatekeeper for President Donald Trump, has been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in the criminal probe of Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to people familiar with the investigation. Mr. Weisselberg is considered a witness in the investigation, the people said. It isn’t known whether he has already appeared before the grand jury or what questions prosecutors of New York’s Southern District have had for him. The date of the subpoena couldn’t be determined. For decades, Mr. Weisselberg has served as executive vice president and chief financial officer at the Trump Organization, and was once described by a person close to the company as “the most senior person in the organization that’s not a Trump.” After Mr. Trump was elected, he handed control of his financial assets and business interests to his two adult sons and Mr. Weisselberg. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment. Mr. Weisselberg and a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization didn’t respond to requests for comment. The subpoena illustrates that investigators are seeking input from Mr. Trump’s closest colleagues in the Trump Organization, particularly those with knowledge of the company’s financial dealings. Related Video A secretive grand jury of anonymous Americans is playing a key role in the Russia investigation. WSJ's Shelby Holliday explains. Mr. Weisselberg, a reserved accountant associates say is prized by Mr. Trump for his loyalty, has handled personal financial matters for Mr. Trump and has also been linked to payments made to two women who alleged they had sexual encounters with Mr. Trump. Last year, Mr. Weisselberg arranged for the Trump Organization to pay Mr. Cohen, who had in October 2016 made a $130,000 payment to Stephanie Clifford, a former adult-film actress who claimed she had sex with Mr. Trump a decade earlier and agreed to remain quiet about it. Mr. Weisselberg didn’t know about the payment to Ms. Clifford, who goes professionally by Stormy Daniels, when he agreed to a $35,000 monthly retainer for Mr. Cohen, according to a person familiar with Mr. Weisselberg’s thinking. During his effort to secure the retainer, Mr. Cohen showed Mr. Weisselberg records that he said related to expenditures he had made on behalf of Mr. Trump from his personal home-equity line of credit, this person said. The other instance emerged this week, in a released audio recording of a September 2016 conversation between Messrs. Trump and Cohen in which the two men discussed buying the rights to a former Playboy model’s story of another affair with Mr. Trump. In the recording, which Mr. Cohen secretly made and which is under review by federal investigators, Mr. Cohen said he would set up a company to make the payment, adding, “I’ve spoken with Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up,” before Mr. Trump interrupts him. Later in the conversation, Mr. Cohen reiterates that he “spoke with Allen” about the plan to finance the payment. Mr. Cohen’s repeated references to Mr. Weisselberg in his conversation with Mr. Trump about buying the story were interpreted by others in the company as an effort to bolster Mr. Cohen’s credibility, according to a former associate of Mr. Weisselberg. It isn’t clear if Mr. Cohen actually spoke with Mr. Weisselberg about the plans to buy the rights to the former Playboy model’s story. Ultimately, American Media Inc., which had purchased those rights a month earlier, declined to pursue the sale. Mr. Trump has denied having sex with either Ms. Clifford or Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model. Federal investigators are looking at whether Mr. Cohen committed bank fraud or campaign-finance violations and are investigating his efforts to eliminate negative publicity for Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Cohen has denied wrongdoing and hasn’t been charged with any crimes. Mr. Weisselberg’s ties to the Trump family date back to days of working for the real-estate firm owned by Mr. Trump’s father, Fred, in the 1980s. He later came to the Trump Organization, where he reported directly to Donald Trump and worked out of an office in Trump Tower. He was long an understated presence—one former colleague told the Journal in 2016 that Mr. Weisselberg “fits in with the wallpaper”—but with a temper that flared at times and an ability to crunch numbers rapidly, former executives said. Mr. Weisselberg long performed tasks such as arranging for checks that Mr. Trump would sign, but also took on an increasingly large role at the company. If he thought there might be questions about whether or not to pay a supplier the full amount the Trump Organization owed, he would direct executives to check directly with Mr. Trump, one former executive said. Over the years, Mr. Weisselberg has handled dealings with banks and other important matters, according to the former executives. He oversaw many of Mr. Trump’s personal transactions, the Journal has reported, citing a former Trump executive, including paying household expenses as well as the purchases of boats, planes or other personal properties. For years, at least through the financial crisis, Mr. Weisselberg prepared Mr. Trump’s tax returns, according to one former Trump Organization employee. Another former executive said Mr. Trump would sometimes point out to him how Mr. Weisselberg had been loyal to him for decades. In the course of business meetings, Mr. Trump also at times would reflexively ask his CFO to confirm his opinion. During one meeting, in 2015, Mr. Trump turned to Mr. Weisselberg and asked, according to a person who was there: “Isn’t that right, Allen?” “One-thousand percent right,” Mr. Weisselberg responded. —Peter Grant contributed to this article. Write to Rebecca Davis O’Brien at Rebecca.OBrien@wsj.com, Rebecca Ballhaus at Rebecca.Ballhaus@wsj.com, Michael Rothfeld at michael.rothfeld@wsj.com and Alexandra Berzon at alexandra.berzon@wsj.com<doc-sep>Bloomberg (Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse Group AG executives ignored warnings from colleagues about troubled steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta as they channeled $1.2 billion of client funds to his businesses, according to people familiar with the matter.Bankers in Credit Suisse’s commodity trade-finance unit blacklisted Gupta’s Liberty Commodities Ltd. in 2016 because they suspected some of its deals weren’t legitimate, the people said. When they learned about two years later that the bank was lending to his companies through a suite of investment funds, which eventually grew to $10 billion, they flagged their worries to leaders in compliance and the division that housed the loans, one of the people said.The disclosure that Credit Suisse may have put clients at risk despite internal concerns over Gupta’s businesses adds a new twist to the debacle stemming from the March implosion of Greensill Capital, the finance firm at the center of the three-way relationship.Investigations, LawsuitsThe U.K. Serious Fraud Office is now investigating Gupta’s group of companies for suspected fraud, including in its financing deals with Greensill, according to a May 14 statement. Credit Suisse has sued to force Gupta’s Liberty Commodities into insolvency and has since shut the funds that made the loans and launched an internal investigation. Investors are staring at losses as the bank confronts embarrassing lawsuits.“We are currently focusing our efforts on recovering our investors’ money,” Will Bowen, a spokesman for Credit Suisse in London, said in an emailed statement, adding that the bank’s internal probe will focus on “all of the issues” linked to the funds. “We are committed to learning the lessons and will share the relevant lessons learnt at the appropriate time.”Andrew Mitchell, a spokesman for the Gupta Family Group Alliance, or GFG Alliance, a collective of businesses linked to Gupta including Liberty Commodities, denied any wrongdoing.The Greensill saga represents just one of the two disasters that rocked Credit Suisse in the first half of 2021. Since Greensill began unraveling, the bank has announced a $5.5 billion hit from the blowup at Archegos Capital Management.ApologiesFormer Chairman Urs Rohner apologized to shareholders and his successor, Antonio Horta-Osorio, who arrived at the end of April, has promised a sweeping strategy review.Chief Executive Officer Thomas Gottstein, who was head of the division that oversaw trade finance, wasn’t aware of the internal concerns about Gupta that had prompted the bank to cut him off, according to a person familiar with the matter.Employees at the trade-finance unit, which lends money for the buying and selling of commodities, cut ties with Gupta in 2016 after becoming skeptical toward his Liberty Commodities, the people said. They distrusted the documents the company provided, triggering doubts about its transactions, they said. In one example reported by Bloomberg, the company had presented another bank with what seemed to be duplicate shipping receipts. A spokesman for Gupta has denied any wrongdoing.Banking TiesLiberty Commodities pledged assets to Credit Suisse as security for borrowings in 2013 but by early 2016, all such commitments had been extinguished, indicating that the financing relationship had ceased, U.K. Companies House filings show. And while Gupta’s company listed the Swiss bank as one of its lenders in its 2014 annual report, it didn’t in the following year’s report, which is dated May 2016, according to the filings.Their counterparts at other banks, including Macquarie Group Ltd. and Sberbank PJSC, halted trading with Liberty Commodities around the same time because of similar concerns; Goldman Sachs Group Inc. also stopped in 2016, Bloomberg has reported.Nevertheless, executives at Credit Suisse’s asset-management division -- which creates investment products for clients and charges a fee for overseeing them -- began arranging a suite of funds focused on supply-chain finance in 2017. The entities bought securitized loans packaged by Greensill, a firm created by Australian businessman Lex Greensill. Much of the debts were linked to Gupta’s businesses.WarningsOfficials at the commodity trade-finance unit were concerned when they found out about the funds’ links to Gupta and took their fears to Thomas Grotzer, general counsel for the bank’s Swiss division. They also warned Luc Mathys and Lukas Haas, the bankers who helped oversee the trades at the asset-management unit.Grotzer was promoted last month to interim global head of compliance at Credit Suisse. He didn’t respond to requests for comment. Mathys, head of fixed-income at the asset-management division, and Haas, a portfolio manager, were put on temporary leave in March. Neither responded to requests for comment.The bank pushed ahead with the funds and marketed them to investors as being made up of short-term debt secured on invoices, assets considered so safe that Credit Suisse gave the largest vehicle its lowest rating for risk. Yet part of the loans were linked to mere possible future revenues.Other parts of the bank continued working with Gupta as well. Credit Suisse’s investment bankers were due to lead an initial public offering for Liberty’s U.S. steel arm, which was ultimately pulled, according to a statement from the company. Gupta also announced that the Swiss bank would finance his planned acquisition of Thyssenkrupp AG’s steel unit, which fell apart earlier this year.Credit Suisse has so far recouped about $5.9 billion of the $10 billion in these supply-chain funds, but it remains unclear how much will be returned ultimately to investors. Loans to Gupta’s businesses are among a batch of debts that are the “principal sources of valuation uncertainty,” the bank said earlier this month.Liberty Commodities’s external legal advisors investigated “alleged rumors concerning the paperwork” it used in 2019, according to Mitchell, the spokesman for GFG Alliance. They found no evidence to substantiate the rumors, nor was the company “ever subject to further complaints or proceedings,” he said.“LCL has ongoing banking relationships with separate financial institutions,” Mitchell said, referring to Liberty Commodities. “The trade-finance market has been hugely challenging for all but the very largest commodities traders in recent years. Nevertheless, no financial institution has been left out of pocket as a result of lending money to LCL. On the contrary, they have received substantial commercial returns.”More stories like this are available on bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.<doc-sep>
Federal investigators are getting closer to the heart of the Trump Organization: The chief financial officer has been subpoenaed to testify, according to the Wall Street Journal. Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization finance chief, was name-dropped on the September 2016 secretly recorded tape in which Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, discusses a payoff to former Playboy model Karen McDougal. At one hard-to-decipher point in the tape, Cohen can be heard telling Trump that he’s “spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with …” Weisselberg’s name appearing hints at the possibility that the Trump Organization was directly involved in the discussions to pay the National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. (AMI). In August 2016, AMI paid $150,000 to McDougal, who says she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and 2007, to get the rights to her story and prevent it from going public. (AMI’s chief, David Pecker, is a friend of Trump’s.) On the tape, Cohen and Trump appear to be discussing the use of a shell company to buy the rights to the story from AMI. Now, it turns out, federal prosecutors have some questions for Weisselberg. The Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Rebecca Ballhaus, Michael Rothfeld, and Alexandra Berzon reported Thursday that Weisselberg has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury, likely appearing as a witness in the Manhattan US attorney’s office investigation into Cohen. “Allen knows where all the financial bodies are buried” Weisselberg’s subpoena is potentially a big deal. He’s worked for the Trump Organization for decades, and before joining the company, he worked for Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump. When Trump became president, he handed over the day-to-day control of the business to his two elder sons and Weisselberg. Weisselberg was also listed as the treasurer for the Trump Foundation, which was recently sued by the New York State Attorney General’s Office, which accused the group of violating state and federal laws. Weisselberg reportedly also did Trump’s personal tax returns for at least some years. Which means if there’s something sketchy in Trump’s finances, or the finances of the Trump Organization, Weisselberg likely knows about. As Timothy L. O’Brien, the author of TrumpNation, wrote in Bloomberg: Weisselberg isn’t a bit player in Trumplandia and his emergence on the Cohen-Trump recording — as someone possibly facilitating a scheme apparently meant to disguise a payoff — should worry the president. Weisselberg has detailed information about the Trump Organization’s operations, business deals and finances. If he winds up in investigators’ crosshairs for secreting payoffs, he could potentially provide much more damaging information to prosecutors than Cohen ever could about the president’s dealmaking. A former Trump Organization employee told NBC reporter Katy Tur that “Alan [sic] knows where all financial bodies are buried within the Trump organization. He knows Trump’s net worth. He knows any and every expenditure out of Trump Org was approved by Alan [sic].” Weisselberg had previously been linked to the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she had an affair with Trump in 2006. According to the New York Times, he had set up the $35,000 retainer that Cohen received from Trump’s personal trust, which was a repayment for the $130,000 Cohen arranged for Daniels ahead of the November 2016 election to keep her quiet about the alleged affair. It’s unclear if Weisselberg knew the purpose of the retainer was reimbursement for the Daniels payoff. Now Weisselberg’s name has popped up in connection with the payoff to McDougal. The Southern District of New York has been investigating Cohen for months, following a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller’s office. The probe appears to include possible legal violations related to these payoffs to Daniels and McDougal. The FBI raided Cohen’s home, hotel, and office on April 9, seizing reams of documents and other materials, including the Trump-Cohen recording that aired this week. That recording, which was provided to CNN by Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis, was seen as another sign that Cohen might be prepared to flip and spill to prosecutors about Trump. But he’s clearly not the only one who might know some of the president’s secrets.