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Mole - thanks for your reply.
I found the official "Income Reports", filed by Cornerstone, that show the income was received this year. US$80K in Q1 and US$80K in Q2 (up from US$50K per Q in 2019).
Q1 - https://disclosurespreview.house.gov/ld/ldxmlrelease/2020/Q1/301173002.xml
Q2 - https://disclosurespreview.house.gov/ld/ldxmlrelease/2020/Q2/301192703.xml
I did contact Cornerstone to ask if the public record was correct. No reply so far - and likely little chance of any sort of reply - but I will keep pushing these groups to try and see if we can find anything out.
Thats a lot of cash coming from somewhere. I agree that your Pt.2 / Pt.3 makes sense - but do you have any view on what the implications of this might mean for shareholders ?
CIA funded.
Looed that is the right question. The why is self evident having started a political campaign then it's no surprise that it has continued given the events having embarked on this journey.
The how again raises the question of funding. If the oil and gas was blocked with presumably the Georgian bank accounts and all the revenue then how are they doing it?
An excellent question for which there are a few possibilities.
1. They accrued some money in the past to spend now. Possible but unlikely. We know from court papers they were down to $50k in the bank end of 2018 and that is the last record I know of cash. Last accounts were not swelled by production either.
So internally generated funds are unlikely.
2. Borrowed or injected money - seems the most likely. They must be getting or have got some cash in either as a result of the green transaction of which we know nothing at all of the financials or someone has extended credit. They might have mortgaged future production given the inherent risks commercial banks would be most likely not an option. Seems most likely they have got some cash from a transaction we are not privy to and the reason why the company should be presenting accounts to explain the financial position to shareholders! One could speculate why they would not publish a set of accounts at the moment.
3. Cash from Steve/Zaza. That's possible indeed FTI have asked the question who is behind the green arrangement.
So to me whoever is behind the green transaction are the obvious candidates as they have most incentive to see a result. There are other creditors who would not like to see FRR fold but would they go beyond extending credit?
The other final possibility is that cornerstone have provided the lobbying but not been paid either I suppose!
The absolute left field field is FRR draw support from some shady govt or quasi govt agents that enables them to carry on. All of which would make not paying the workers (allegedly) all the stranger.
To me the non payment of workers makes more sense as a result of something FIT have done but we know alot of them must have been contractors maybe uniserve employees who relied on the development work which has stopped since 2018.
Johnathansxx - I am not questioning how the money has been spent. I am asking how did we get the money to pay for this.
Looed. I think the question should be "Why are we still paying for this?"
That sort of money could have been very useful for many things, but obviously Zaza feels it is needed for lobbying as that is our best chance for resolving this.
A couple of months or so ago the amount contributed to politicians in 2020 - as reported on open secrets.com - was around US$35K. A while back a poster shared that the amount had increased to approx US$44K.
I just checked the site and found another page which I don't think we have seen before. That shows that in addition to above amount, FRR has also donated US$160K in 2020 to their long-time lobbying firm - "Cornerstone Government Affairs".
Total contributions to "Cornerstone" are as follows -
2020 - US$160K (to date)
2019 - US$200K
2018 - US$200K
2017 - US$50K
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyists?cycle=2017&id=D000071040
Zaza has been asked a couple of times about "Cornerstone" and this is what he said in Translation #1 which doesn't seem to fit the data on opensecrets -
"Yes, we had a relationship with „Cornerstone“, but in 2019 we no longer had a relationship. I.e. We had this relationship with "Cornerstone“ and they did some work for us and we ended the contract. So we don't even have a contract with them. So to argue that lobbyists work is not really correct at this moment."
So far in 2020, out of 162 major donors to the O&G lobby, FRR are 55th on that list.
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/industries/summary?cycle=2020&id=E01
How are we paying for this?