This shows their involvement in managing Russian sovereign wealth lately. Note: their wealth management was directly impacted by US sanctions. Motive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/business/dealbook/russian-...

True enough, and I did find that. But "managing money for" is not the same as - or even comparable to - "owned by". Blackstone manages money across East Asia, but is owned (almost?) entirely by Americans.

You can tell a story where Schwarzman's involvement with Trump and the Russian Direct Investment Fund constitutes a shady link to Sibur, a state-tied petrochem company. Those statements are all true; the rebuttal would be something like "all big companies in Russia are in some ways intermingled with the state; all companies which invest in Russia are at most two removes from Kremlin shadiness". I think that is probably also true, but it doesn't make this a non-issue for me.

Bayrock's ties are messier, certainly. They're also lower level on both ends, particularly since Trump's total involvement with them seems to be <$100 million, which makes that "$560 million in debt" claim laughable.

More importantly: Do you have any actual source for the claims in the previous post? You've pointed to some other topics, but the "owned wholly" and "$560 million in debt" claims seem completely baseless, and that source list was just the names of major publication.

What about this? FT went around and asked all the questions and got wildly different answers. Someone is not telling the truth.

https://www.ft.com/content/549ddfaa-5fa5-11e6-b38c-7b39cbb11...

The links to money laundering are fairly clear here.

https://www.ft.com/content/33285dfa-9231-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a...

But you're right. In the end it's impossible to tell for sure. The claim made is not fully substantiatable.

Bayrock has ties with Russian projects as well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-mafia-linked-...