This submission was linked from this v/thinkdrafts submission by @letsdothis3.

^{Posted automatically (#35720) by the SearchVoat.co Cross-Link Bot. You can suppress these notifications by appending a forward-slash(/) to your Voat link. More information here.}

Joule Unlimited, Member of the Board (2010-2017)

As part of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, an annual awards ceremony was created, the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity.[13] The award was named in honor of Aurora Mardiganian, who played an important role in creating awareness of the Armenian Genocide amongst the public, reliving her horrors through her book "Ravished Armenia" which inspired the eponymous film. The Aurora Prize is awarded annually in Yerevan to recognize modern day heroes and the exceptional impact their actions have made on preserving human life and advancing humanitarian causes in the face of adversity.

The co-chairman of the selection committee is the filmmaker and philanthropist George Clooney. The first co-chair of the selection committee was the Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, from March 2015 until his death in July 2016. The commission consists of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative co-founder Vartan Gregorian, Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Leymah Gbowee, Shirin Ebadi and Óscar Arias, Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London Lord Ara Darzi, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, former United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders Hina Jilani, Honorary President of the International Crisis Group and former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, former President of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo, co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruben_Vardanyan_(businessman)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruben_Vardanyan_(businessman)

http://archive.fo/BKZrv

http://archive.fo/BKZrv

With an international education spanning from Moscow to Harvard Business School in the United States, Vardanyan ran Troika for more than a decade after its founding.

He then helped found the investment boutique Vardanyan, Broitman, and Partners, but has become known as much for his philanthropy as for his business acumen.

In an October 2018 interview with the Financial Times, he said he and his wife, Veronika Zonabend, had agreed to give away more than 80 percent of their wealth.

He has co-founded several educational and humanitarian initiatives, including the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, which annually awards a $1.1 million prize to honor individuals or organizations for humanitarian work.

https://www.rferl.org/a/troika-laundromat-accusations-cast-millionaire-vardanyan-in-new-light/29803011.html

"Understand, I'm no angel," he told the OCCRP in an interview. "In Russia, you have three paths: Be a revolutionary, leave the country, or be a conformist. So I'm a conformist.

But I have my own internal restraints: I never participated in tax auctions, I never worked with criminals, I'm not a member of any political party. That's why, even in the '90s, I went around with no security guards.... I'm trying to preserve myself and my principles."

https://www.rferl.org/a/troika-laundromat-accusations-cast-millionaire-vardanyan-in-new-light/29803011.html

Aurora Forum. #AuroraForum

Ruben Vardanyan, the Russian who paid Podesta, Clintons and into other DNC revenue streams was appointed by Putin and gave millions to interfere with the US election.

In addition to George Clooney’s generous grant, The Sentry is pleased to announce leadership gifts from: Don Cheadle, Carl Allen, Ruben Vardanyan, the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative, and three major donors who wish to remain anonymous. Including the Clooney Foundation grant, these gifts total $3.45 million. To reach our campaign goal of $6 million, The Sentry will seek to raise an additional $2.55 million.

https://thesentry.org/2017/10/25/1768/george-clooney-donates-1-million-counter-war-crimes-corruption-africa/

Mr. Vardanyan has had a long and successful career in business. Previously, he served as CEO and Chairman of the Board at Troika Dialog, one of the oldest and largest investment banks in Russia and the CIS, before the merger with Sberbank in January 2012. Highly regarded as having made a strong impact on the development of Russia’s stock market and related institutions, he now is a regular guest to economic forums and a frequently-quoted expert in Russian and global media.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/ruben-vardanyan

Clooney's Sentry Project (part of the Enough project) operates under the globalist think tank, the Center for Advanced Defense Studies and is bankrolled by John Podesta’s Center for American Progress (CAP). Clooney is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Fellow members include people like Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Clooney's partner is Prendergast.

https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1821903

Russia Gave $35 Million To John Podesta – Media Blackout

http://yournewswire.com/russia-john-podesta/

Is Aurora Compatible with Amulsar Mining? Open letter to Ruben Vardanyan and Noubar Afeyan

http://www.armecofront.net/en/news/is-aurora-compatible-with-amulsar-mining-open-letter-to-ruben-vardanyan-and-noubar-afeyan/

Panama Papers Reveal Clinton’s Kremlin Connection

http://observer.com/2016/04/panama-papers-reveal-clintons-kremlin-connection/

https://www. reddit.com/r/HillaryForPrison/comments/7yb8lj/ruben_vardanyan_the_russian_who_paid_podesta/

Ruben Vardanyan and Veronika Zonabend made a decision to create IDeA FoundationRuben Vardanyan and Veronika Zonabend made a decision to create IDeA Foundation

https://twitter.com/UWCDilijan/status/1004995346571890689

Overview over Vardanyan's charities:

He runs several charities.

Troika Dialog was the first investment bank in Russia after the end of the Soviet Union. Vardanyan sold it in 2012 to Sberbank for 1bn.

Ruben Vardanyan and Noubar Afeyan, Co-Founders of the Aurora Humanitarian Initative

See http://archive.fo/ReBRx for infographic linking the Magnitsky case to Vardanyan's Troika Dialog.

Magnitsky rings a bell, doesn't it?

Yup.

How Prince Charles's stately home restoration linked him to Russian money

The Guardian, 4 March 2019

Ruben Vardanyan, whose bank channelled $4.6bn to the west, helped fund restoration of Dumfries House

It was an intimate gathering.

A select group of Russian businessmen assembled for a black-tie dinner at Dumfries House, the stately home restored for the nation thanks to a major fundraising campaign by the Prince of Wales. The heir to the throne wanted to thank his donors in person.

One of them was Ruben Vardanyan.

A well-known philanthropist, he ran an investment bank, Troika Dialog, an independent arm of which moved vast amounts of private wealth out of Russia into Europe.

Troika is under the spotlight because staff from this independent division administered a network of shell companies that appear to have mixed legitimate and illegitimate money.

Vardanyan didn’t know anything about this. Neither did Prince Charles. There is no criticism of either of them.

But leaked banking records underline once again the problems created by opaque transactions that allow vast amounts of money to flow from Russia into the western banking system.

The relationship between the prince and the financier began in November 2009, when Vardanyan made a charitable donation of $100,000 to the Prince’s Charities Foundation – then a key fundraising vehicle for Charles’s charitable work.

The payment came not from Vardanyan’s personal account, but was transferred from an account at Ukio Bank in Lithuania belonging to a shell company registered in the British Virgin Islands – Quantus Division Ltd.

Via Lithuania, Quantus moved over $700m into the global banking system from its creation in 2006 until Ukio was declared insolvent and closed down by the authorities in 2013.

Two more payments to the foundation followed, from the same source. Quantus sent £38,000 in January 2010 and £25,000 in May 2011, with records showing the last donation was received at a branch of Coutts in the Strand, London.

In total, the foundation received $200,000.

Vardanyan says the payments were in support of a programme to “preserve architectural heritage in England”.

Explaining why they came from Quantus, he said: “I instructed my office to transfer funds to the Prince of Wales charity fund. I did not go into detail about which financial and settlement centre the transfer would be made through, but my office was in charge of these details.”

The prince’s foundation had been left with a big financial hole to plug. The cause? A £20m loan it had taken out to buy Dumfries House.

In 2007, after hearing it was to be sold to a private buyer, Charles stepped in. He raised £45m for the stately home, which contains a unique collection of Chippendale furniture. His intervention came not a moment too soon. Lorries were already carrying the antiques to the auction house. One day, at 1am, they were stopped on a Cumbria motorway and turned back.

The battle to rescue Dumfries did not end there. Soon, there were questions over whether the loan could be repaid.

In a documentary about the rescue, the prince told ITV: “You know you wake up in the middle of the night thinking, help … having done the actual deal, then a year later or two years later the bottom fell out of the market, didn’t it? … overnight, the value of everything went right down.”

Charles redoubled his fundraising efforts. In February 2010, he hosted Armenian dignitaries at a dinner at Windsor Castle. In 2013, Armenia hosted Charles on a private visit.

The networking paid off.

Through his UK registered charity, Vardanyan raised a further £1.5m to refurbish The Mains, one of the estate’s outbuildings, providing 16 luxury rooms that could be rented out to visitors. The money came from his own pocket, and those of other Russian donors – though not from the Troika Laundromat.

By then, Troika had been sold, with Vardanyan taking his share of the reported $1bn price.

In return for his generosity, the structure has been renamed The Dilijan Building, after a school in Armenia sponsored by Vardanyan. A 10-year partnership was created, with students from Dilijan attending regular courses at the estate.

Vardanyan’s website lists the Dumfries donors. Their photos are there too, shaking hands with the prince, presenting him with a gift, and later in tuxedos and evening gowns for the formal dinner Charles hosted in 2014 to mark the completion of the project.

It is understood Troika Dialog had never been fined by any regulatory body or law enforcement agency and had at all times observed international standards of transparency and compliance.

Vardanyan was never involved in the operations, management or activities of the independent arm of the bank that administered Quantus and other offshore companies. This division was, he said, created to help manage family money for private clients.

He did have an account and his own funds at the division, and it is understood he paid fees for the service set at a commercial rate.

“The Prince of Wales’s charities operate independently of the prince himself in relation to all decisions around fundraising,” a Clarence House spokesman said.

In a statement, the prince’s charities said they apply “robust due diligence processes” in accordance with Charity Commission and Scottish Charity Regulator guidelines and money laundering legislation. They said the donations in question had raised no “red flags” when checks were being made.

It was not unusual for donations to be sent through offshore accounts, the charities stated, adding that they would not rule out such payments in future – provided they adhere to all relevant guidelines.

http://archive.fo/ReBRx