So, after a lot of digging on things Ukraine and money laundering related, an interesting thought entered my mind.
Taking what we know about how money laundering works, shell companies etc, then adding to the mix how our corrupt politicians are always trying to raise taxes, and how there are numerous examples of them robbing the taxpayer piggy bank, I suspect they have upscaled their money laundering games.
Think about it. They go to a corrupt bank to launder the money, but what if, they scaled that up and through various corrupt means, put corrupt leaders in control of whole countries and used that to launder their money.
So it would work like this. Put corrupt crony in power. Crony makes things bad in his country. Along comes the corrupt political savior who milks the American public for, "humanitarian aid," sends it to their corrupt crony who then keeps some, and kicks back the rest. There are probably other perks with that scenario that I can't even think of in regards to smuggling in general.