his activities. And he is known to Belgian law enforcement, French, and crosses paths with Moskovich on a lot of this stuff. So we are talking about the same crowd. Raiffeisen Bank was during that period the main service bank for the top level Russian corruption and organized crime activity.
So I wrote a lot about Raiffeisen in those days because they were laundering the money from the Mafia gas trading scheme that Putin was running between Ukraine and Russia. And when the Mogilevich Dmytro Firtash network was setting up their finance role and corporate operations to siphon money off the gas trade, they did it with Raiffeisen. And they came up in several other cases, and they were the go to bank for top level Russian dirty stuff.
In regard to all that, and again going back to your earlier question, I think that there is a lot of information to be had from Canadian law enforcement and from Belgian law enforcement about some of these characters. I think you they know pretty well who these guys are, and they have been looking at them for a long time.
MS. SPEIER: Okay. What is the interest of Russia with the National Rifle Association?
MR. SIMPSON: I think that most of what we have found is pretty much out there now. You know, it's been said by others, but, you know, what eventually -- it appears the Russians, you know, infiltrated the NRA. And there is more than one explanation for why. But I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations. And they targeted various conservative organizations, religious and otherwise, and they seem to have made a very concerted effort to get in with the NRA.
And so there is a Russian banker-slash-Duma member-slash-Mafia leader
UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
