A controversial India businessman Gaurav Kumar Srivastava, currently living in the US, has been accused of orchestrating international scams in which he claimed to be a Central Investigation Agency (CIA) operative to defraud global businessmen, including the Geneva-based Dutch oil trader NielsTroost.
An investigation published in respected investigative journalism forum “Project Brazen” has laid bare the full extent of how Srivastava conned the Dutch oil trader, leading to a legal battle. The elaborate web of lies has been exposed at the “Project Brazen” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter Bradley Hope and Scobin Kim
According to the available evidence, GauravSrivastava met Troost in summer 2022 at the G20 summit in Bali that November. The Atlantic Council hosted the event sponsored with more than $1 million by the Gaurav& Sharon Srivastava Foundation, the non-profit NGO run by Srivastava with his wife Sharon Srivastava (née Johnson) in the name of ‘securing food & energy for America and the world’. Troost and Srivastava joined a panel of experts to discuss global food security, and the Atlantic Council’s President Frederick Kempe profusely thanked Srivastava for his generous donation but he had no idea what would happen in the following months.
According to the Project Brazen investigation, NielsTroost was introduced in summer 2022 by a mutual contact to Gaurav Kumar Srivastava, who pretended to be very well connected with the Washington power circles and also to the country’s main spy agency – the CIA. At that time, the oil trader was in a state of growing panic as someone purporting to be a US government informant had falsely led him to believe that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was investigating him and his commodities-trading company headquartered in Switzerland, Paramount Energy & Commodities SA. Months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Paramount was continuing to trade Russian oil, mainly crude, in full compliance with the law, shipping from a port near Vladivostok. At the time, the G-7 was actively considering a price cap on Russian oil, with the US as its biggest supporter.
Troost asked GauravSrivastava for help. Srivastava assured him that he will deal with the FBI and led Troost to believe he was a “non-official cover” or NOC (pronounced “knock”) for the CIA and operated at the senior level amongst a total of 30 NOCs around the world. Srivastava put forth a dubious proposition: if Troost could make Srivastava a partner in the business, by moving 50% of the shares of Paramount to a Delaware-incorporated company controlled by Srivastava, and domicile Paramount into the US, Troost would quietly be excused from future sanctions on Russia, because he would then be part of a state-approved network to collect intelligence on behalf of the US. Srivastava stipulated that the transfer must take place through US law firm Baker & Hostetler.
According to the investigation, Srivastava lied to Troost that he was involved in top-secret counter-terrorism missions, including several in Afghanistan, and that in 2008 he was held hostage by ISIS in the Democratic Republic of Congo – despite there being no evidence of ISIS in the DRC at the time.
According to a transcript of their meeting, Srivastava, who was born in Lucknow in Northern India and now appears to reside in Los Angeles with his wife Sharon, told Troost that it was through his work as a CIA agent that he was able to make high-level contacts in Congress and the State Department and that these contacts would allow Troost to continue doing business in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine with a special license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), provided that he agreed to Srivastava’s conditions.
