Martin pleaded guilty in 2001. During the 2003 trial of attorney Thomas Jones, who handled the closing of the loans, Martin said that Taylor had first-hand knowledge of the loans. Cagle and Jones also said Taylor knew of the fraud. Taylor has refused to comment on the case. Congressional staff routinely said the fraud was bank business and referred questions to Blue Ridge President Dwayne Wiseman. Following the sentencing, Taylor press secretary Deborah Potter said Taylor still had no comment, and reviewed a statement by Wiseman: "For a number of years there has been an effort on the part of certain political opponents of Congressman Charles Taylor to slander him and Blue Ridge Savings Bank by indicating that neither he nor the bank or any present officers of the bank had any prior knowledge," Wiseman said in the statement. "This went on for some nine years with the encouragement of the press. We would hope that the settlement of this case would put an end to such speculation." Taylor was never targeted by authorities as having any involvement in helping Martin defraud Blue Ridge Savings Bank, which Taylor owned. Russian investments Starting in the mid-1990s, Charles Taylor began financing small businesses in and around Ivanovo, an industrial city of almost 500,000, about northeast of Moscow. In 2003, Taylor purchased the Commercial Bank of Ivanovo with a Russian partner, Boris Bolshakov, a former KGB colonel and Supreme Soviet deputy, and Bolshakov's wife Marina. Taylor owns 80 percent of the bank as well as Columbus, a Russian investment company. In December 2005, the Bank of Ivanovo opened a new four-story headquarters, its second office, in the city's downtown. Taylor said at the time that he didn't consider the bank to yet be particularly profitable. In mid-2006, Bolshakov said the bank's hard currency balance was more than $22 million and its loan portfolio was more than $18.6 million. One of the 2005 participants in the Russian student exchange program told Associated Press that she had a summer work-study internship at the Bank of Ivanovo after she returned to Russia. Taylor's office said that was a mistake because Institute policy forbids participants to work in "any business venture with which Congressman Taylor is associated." The bank has since ended its participation in the work-study program, Taylor's office said. Bank of Ivanovo had its license revoked on April 5, 2019, by the Central Bank of