Trump Jr. Should Be 'Concerned' - Putin Ally's Wiretapped Calls Sent to FBI, Says Spanish Prosecutor

Grinda, like a Spanish Zelig, has questioned sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska, jailed the mafia kingpin Zakhar Kalashov, played a walk-on role in the fall of the Russian defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov, and convinced Alexander Litvinenko to testify against the Russian mafia and its ties to the Kremlin only months before the former FSB agent was murdered in London.

“More should be encouraged to follow Grinda’s example,” said Ana Gomes, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament and Vice-Chair of the assembly’s Special Committee on Financial Crimes, Tax Evasion, and Tax Avoidance, who campaigns for sanctions on Russian kleptocrats. Grinda is as highly regarded in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, home of the FBI.

Maxwell Marker, Section Chief of the Transnational Organized Crime Section – Eastern Hemisphere, lauded Grinda’s “relentless” pursuit of mafia groups which “threaten national security not only in Spain, but in the United States,” in a statement to The American Interest. They are more than just friends. “The FBI has a longstanding partnership with José Grinda,” said Marker, who described the relationship with Grinda as “important” and “valuable.”

He has been so successful that in February 2016, France intercepted a mafia kingpin ordering Grinda’s assassination. “I don’t think they’re going to get it done,” Grinda says, adding that a second hit on him was ordered in March 2018.