Scientologists Gottfried Helnwein and Trish Duggan collaborated on a project called Blue Madonna in 2022.

As reported by Tony Ortega, Scientologist Ivan Gaspari was recently sentenced to 5.5 years in a Swiss prison for embezzling $7 million USD from his fellow Scientologist Trish Duggan. The money was an investment Duggan made into Gaspari’s Swiss-based steel trading company Ivancore SA.

This should have been an easy case: If Trish Duggan transferred $10 million into Ivancore’s corporate account and Gaspari withdrew it and stole it, this would be a very simple money trail to follow: One deposit and withdrawals totaling $7 million. What did Gaspari do with the $7 million he stole from Duggan? How did Trish Duggan have the power to keep Gaspari in prison beginning in June, 2023 until the verdict in his criminal trial in late October 2024? And was Gaspari ordered to pay restitution to Duggan? More information is required. The Gaspari case does not make sense to us upon first impression. We sense there are, to borrow a Hubbard phrase, missing or incorrect datums.

Per Hubbard’s policy, Scientologists are not permitted to sue each other in public courts. However, Trish Duggan was allowed to sue Ivan Gaspari in violation of this policy. Our view, at present, is that Gaspari is both a thief and a pawn who was outplayed and silenced by far more powerful forces at work than he realized. Steel trading in Switzerland is dominated by Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs who have worked in metals since the 1990’s and have ties to Putin’s organizations and, in some cases, organized crime. 

We have long used the term “the Scientology Money Club” to refer to the elite monied class of Scientologists whose financial interests are intertwined and are often connected to offshore tax havens. In some cases, this club is connected to dirty money. We showed, for example, how the seed money for Scientologist David Gentile’s GPB Capital Holdings came from the Russian oligarch and crime boss Michael Chernaya who has ties to Vladimir Putin. Chernaya is the reputed head of the Izmailovskaya crime family based in Moscow. Chernaya made his fortune in the violent aluminum wars of the 1990’s in Russia. These wars played out in courts across the Western World. Many powerful people died under mysterious circumstances in the typical fashion of Putin’s enemies. 

Trish Duggan invested $30 million USD in Gaspari’s firm Ivcancore SA, a steel trading firm located Lugano which is in the Swiss canton of Ticino. $10 million came from a Bank of America account in Los Angeles; $10 million from the Trish Duggan Revocable Trust in Delaware; and $10 million from one of Trish Duggan’s personal accounts in Clearwater.

The IAS registar Tyler Pirak focused on this money and convinced Ivan Gaspari to donate $9 million of the borrowed money. According to testimony, Pirak also asked Gaspari to give me a percentage of ownership in Gaspari’s company. This percentage was to be held by Tyler Pirak’s sister. 

This region of Switzerland borders Italy and is a hub of metals trading firms in Southern Europe. However, Ticino has become notorious as a tax haven for dodgy companies. According to the Pandora Papers, 9,800 shell companies are registered in Ticino.

The Public Eye reported that four cantons in Switzerland are home to a staggering 33,000 shell companies. It seems that when Mossack-Fonseca melted down following the revelation of its criminal activities in creating shell companies for shady people, the action shifted to Switzerland. Of course, Wyoming took a part of the business and became a haven for money laundering, tax evasion, and even Mexican drug cartel money. The US Congress has acted to stop Wyoming.

Whether US Congressional action will work in Wyoming remains to be seen. The Mexican drug cartels earn billions of dollars in the US and need mechanisms to hide and launder their  fortunes earned by selling deadly drugs. There are many American criminals who are only too glad to help the cartels.

While Ivancore SA was owned by Gaspari, the firm now owned by Ferrum C LLC, a Delaware corporation owned by Trish Duggan. 

This initial capitalization is so small that it lacks any credibility. $115,000 USD will not pay for a single salary let alone leased office space; computers; trading software; market access fees;  furniture; and the many other items required by a startup. Switzerland is not a cheap place to do business. While it is true that Ticino is a low tax canton — and this is part of what attracts shell companies — the actual costs of living and renting office space in Ticino is expensive.

The initial capitalization also puts the lie to Gaspari’s claim that he was already making money in steel trading and therefore Trish Duggan decided to invest $10 million to allow his firm to grow and make even more money. However, Gaspari was not initially told by Duggan’s money manager Osman Ozsan that the $10 million cash infusion was from Duggan.  

Gaspari stated that a percentage of Ivancore’s increased profits would be donated to Scientology. This makes no sense to us as Trish has zero experience in steel trading and could have simply made a direct $10 million donation to the IAS and wrote it off her taxes here in the US.

There is much more to the story of Ivancore SA that calls for investigation, particularly of Trish Duggan, her inner circle, and that of Scientology’s shadowy ties to London and Russian money.

Osman Ozsan

Trish Duggan’s money manager is a Scientologist named Osman Ozsan. He has recently taken down his LinkedIn page, which raises questions in the wake of Gaspari’s conviction. As Duggan’s money manager, Ozsan would have overseen Duggan’s $10 million investment in Ivancore SA. While Gaspari is listed as the beneficial owner of Ivancore SA, we suspect the  the firm is actually owned by Trish Duggan via a shell company in Ticino. This shell company would be controlled by Ozsan through one of his companies. 

We previously covered Osman Ozsan and called him the most powerful Scientologist people have never heard of. Ozsan’s company Deuterium Capital Management is based in London where Tom Cruise has lived for the past five years.

Ozsan’s partner is his fellow Scientologist Maria Dolores Gregori Fuster. Fuster and Ozsan go back a long way to Altea Real Property Ltd. in London. Ozsan has had a residence in London since 2001. He has also lived in Hong Kong and South Korea.

Ozsan has other companies:

DEUTERIUM ASSET MANAGEMENT LIMITED
DEUTERIUM INVESTMENT ADVISORS LIMITED
ARKWRIGHT ROAD LIMITED
ANTIFRAGILE LIMITED
EMPIRICAL PROSPECTING COMPANY LIMITED

Osman Ozsan runs two funds in Clearwater:

1. 1. Ozsan, Gregori And Company LLC in Clearwater which is related to:
   2. Deuterium Capital LLC.  The locations for Ozsan are just where one would expect: Clearwater, London, and Zurich.

The Duggan v. Gaspari saga includes former Ivancore SA employee and Scientologist Manuel Vianna who was previously an executive at GPB Capital Holdings. Vianna was on the US Government’s witness list for the criminal trial GPB Holdings owner David Gentile and his co-defendant Jeffry Schneider.

GPB Capital Holdings CEO David Gentile, yet another Scientologist, was just convicted of five felonies in a US Federal criminal trial. He is facing a 20-year prison sentence. Vianna seems to have disappeared for some time after the legal troubles began at GPB Capital Holdings. He then worked for Ivancore SA. As with Osman Ozsan, Vianna’s LinkedIn page has also been taken down. In 2022, Vianna served as the unpaid chairman of Suncoast Narconon in Clearwater, Florida. 

Vianna was previously employed as an executive in Matt Feshbach’s Bahamian stem cell company Okyanos, a firm whose initial funding of $14.2 million dollars came largely from an Iraqi Scientologist named Ali Shawkat, a man whose father is Mudhar Shawkat, a former member of the Iraqi parliament.

Manuel Vianna has now worked as an executive at three troubled Scientologist-owned companies: Ivancore SA; GPB Capital Holdings; and Okyanos. Why Vianna, who has an earned Harvard MBA, worked at these particular companies raises serious questions about his role within the Scientology Money Club.

There were concerns at Appleby Global, the powerful London-based global financial law firm, about the $140 million the Shawkat’s took out of Iraq when they left the country. An internal Appleby email leaked by the Paradise Papers stated: 

According to 2008 confidential emails, the lawyer representing Shawkat and his son, Ali, asked Appleby to hold in escrow about $140 million, the proceeds of the sale of the Shawkat’s’ shares in a joint venture with a Kuwaiti telecommunications company. The law firm refused that request but accepted them as clients later in 2008.

Appleby set up the Passion Group Trust for the benefit of Mudhar Shawkat’s family members and registered three affiliated companies in the British Virgin Islands in 2008 and 2011, according to the files. Shawkat was identified in the Appleby documents as an “additional settlor” (a person who creates and funds a trust) of the Passion Group Trust and as a shareholder of Passion Investment Ltd., the trust’s investment arm.

However, upon the incorporation of a not-for-profit entity, which was also a beneficiary of the trust, concerns about the Iraqi family’s reported association with Chalabi [Ahmed Chalabi, 1944-2015. A controversial Iraqi politician.] emerged at the law firm. “It is suspicious,” an Appleby employee wrote in an email, “that they are setting up a charitable company offshore [Passion for Change S.A.] for funds coming out of Iraq – there does not seem any benefit other than lack of accountability in doing so.”

The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database page on Mudhar Shawkat states that Appleby Global — an offshore law firm that some have compared to the notorious Panamanian firm of Mossack Fonseca — set up the “Passion Group S.A.” for the Shawkat family. “S.A.” is a business term meaning “Society Anonymous.” A person who owns shares in an S.A. corporation can have those shares held by an offshore law firm and therefore gain anonymity.

We mention the Shawkat money because when Bob and Trish Duggan were married, we traced Bob Duggan to the Shawkat’s via the Panama Papers. The Duggans and the Shawkats were financially linked in offshore companies. These were the Duggan’s Genuine First Aid International Ltd. and the Shawkat’s Passion Investments Ltd.:

Matt Feshbach sold Okyanos to the billionaire mathematician Dr. Ed Bosarge, a former IBM computer scientist who worked on the Saturn V program for NASA. Bosarge later, and arguably, created quant trading.

Feshbach had initially sold Okyanos to a scammy company in the UK. In any event, Feshbach and Bosarge had a falling out and the former sued the latter for breach of contract. Oddly, Scientologist Sean Napier, whose father is Captain Mike Napier of the Freewinds, remained employed at Okyanos from 2012-2020. 

Why Sean Napier was allowed to stay on at Okyanos after Feshbach sold the company and then sued the new non-Scientology owner raises, once again, serious questions about the Scientology Money Club and how Hubbard’s policies do not apply to certain people.

Sean Napier’s employment ended when Okyanos’ facility, and indeed virtually all of Freeport, was destroyed by the Category 5 Hurricane Dorian in 2020. Okyanos was wound down and closed by order of the Bahamian legal authorities. The company cited a $12 million debt to its main lender that it could not repay. The lender was LS Enterprises Ltd., a firm registered in the British Virgin Islands. LS Enterprises Ltd. entered into insolvency in the UK in July, 2023.  

Trish Duggan’s money manager and fellow Scientology Osman Ozsan who is, in our opinion,  one of the most important Scientologists you’ve never heard would have been involved in the Ivancore investment representing Trish Duggan’s financial interests. To this point, Ozsan has bragged of his financial prowess in investing in premium stocks such as Oracle and Nvidia. However, Ozsan appears to have failed to perform adequate due diligence when it came to investing $7 million of Duggan’s money into Ivancore SA. 

Scientologist and attorney Stephen Hayes, who is the mix on a lot of things when it comes to wealthy Scientologists, represented Trish Duggan in the Gaspari case. As we previously reported, Hayes also worked with David Gentile on the latter’s ill-fated 2022 attempt to stage a legal coup and wrest back control of GPB Capital from the court-appointed monitor.

Like Manuel Vianna, attorney Stephen Hayes has been at the center of certain Scientology Money Club affairs and this too raises questions about his role.

Gentile had voluntarily resigned as CEO of GPB Capital Holdings, of which he is the sole owner, following his criminal indictment. His attempted coup came on the heels of GPB Capital Holdings selling its automotive portfolio for $880 million in 2021. This left the firm with a reported $1.1 billion in liquid cash which Gentile very much wanted to seize control of. Despite the efforts of Stephen Hayes and other Scientologists, Gentile’s coup failed. 

We mentioned LS Enterprises Ltd., the main lender to Okyanos, to establish it as the main debt holder. Curiously, the UK Registry indicates that LS Enterprises Ltd.’s SIC Code is 24520 which code is for the casting of steel, which brings us back to Ivan Gaspari and his steel trading business in Switzerland. There appear to be secretive Scientology Money Club interconnections which we will discuss in a subsequent article.

Northdata’s graphic on Ivancore SA (shown below) curiously omits any mention of Gaspari. Following his departure from the firm as CEO and subsequent imprisonment, Gaspari was replaced by Clearwater Scientologist Janine Tschupp whose experience selling tote bags at her company Dejaroo was deemed sufficient for Trish Duggan to appoint her as the President of a Swiss steel trading company. Janine will likely sign whatever Osman hands her.

It is worth noting that long-time Ukrainian steel executive Dr. Sergiy Dynchev worked at Ivancore SA as CFO until Gaspari’s troubles began. We suspect that Dynchev, who has wide ties to the Eastern European and Russian metal industries, knew something about Gaspari, or perhaps even Trish Duggan, and wisely resigned. Dynchev moved far away from Switzerland and accepted a position in Abu Dhabi as the Deputy Group CFO of Emirates Steel Arkan, which firm recently renamed itself Emsteel.

The bottom line: A deeper investigation of the Ivancore SA case is merited because Gaspari, in our view, “took one for the team” so to speak. Our guess is that Gaspari will serve only a small fraction of his prison sentence only to emerge somewhere far outside the US in a nice position. Perhaps he can manage Gary Cardone’s Chargebacks911 call center in India; this assuming Gary and Monica Cardone are not criminally indicted as we predict.