Corruption

Revealed: A Former FBI Director’s Double Game With Stolen Russian Money

Earlier this month, the Estonian Finance Ministry announced it had hired a major American law firm, headed by a controversial former FBI director, to spend the next two years, at a cost of at least 3 million euros, digging into widely reported allegations of international money laundering through Nordic banks.

In normal circumstances, such a deal would be seen as an unmitigated PR coup in the deeply pro-American Baltic state. But in this instance the firm, Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan LLP, is run by senior managing partner Louis Freeh, a former federal court judge and ex-FBI director who recently defended one of the alleged money launderers in U.S. court. And the Finance Ministry for which Freeh and his law firm are contracted to work is headed by the racist leader of a far-right political party, now part of Estonia’s tenuous coalition government with centrist and conservative parties.

Freeh has also been named “the leader of the advisory team to the Estonian state,” as per an Estonian press report. Several sources in the Estonian government, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that Freeh’s appointment to such a role has raised eyebrows in Tallinn.