Semion Mogilevich

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Semion Mogilevich
FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Born: June 30, 1946 (1946-06-30) (age 63)
Charged with: Mail, wire and securities fraud, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act conspiracy, money laundering, aiding and abetting, filing false registration and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, falsification of books and records
Date Added: October 23, 2009
Number on List: #494
Currently Top Ten Fugitive

Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich (Семен Могилевич; born June 30, 1946 in Kiev, Ukraine) — also transliterated as "Semyon" — is a billionaire organized crime boss believed by European and United States federal law enforcement agencies to be the "boss of bosses" of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world.[1]

Mogilevich is nicknamed "The Brainy Don" because of his business acumen and his degree in economics from Lviv University. He is also known as "Papa" and "Seva" (Russian, short for "Semion").

He allegedly controls RosUkrEnergo, a company currently actively involved in Russia–Ukraine gas disputes[2]

On October 22, 2009 he was named by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the 494th fugitive to be placed on the Ten Most Wanted list. He replaced Jorge Lopez-Orozco on the list.

[edit] Biography

Mogilevich was born into a middle-class Jewish family. At the age of 22 he earned an advanced degree in economics from Lviv University.

In the early 1970s he became part of the Lyubertskaya crime group in Moscow and was involved in petty theft and fraud. He served two terms (3 and 4 years) for currency-dealing offenses.[3]

During the 1980s, tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian Jews were emigrating to Israel on short notice and without the ability to quickly transfer their possessions. Mogilevich would offer to sell property – their furniture, art and diamonds – on behalf of the prospective émigrés, promising to forward the money on to Israel. The money was, instead, used to invest in black market and criminal activities.[4] In 1990, already a millionaire, Mogilevich moved to Israel, together with several top lieutenants. Here he invested in a wide range of legal businesses, whilst continuing to operate a worldwide network of prostitution, weapon, and drug smuggling through a complex web of offshore companies.[5]

In 1991 Mogilevich married his Hungarian girlfriend Katalin Papp and moved to Hungary and had three children with her, obtaining a Hungarian passport; at this point, Mogilevich held Russian, Ukrainian, Israeli and Hungarian citizenship. Living in a fortified villa outside Budapest, he continued to invest in a wide array of enterprises, including buying a local armament factory, "Army Co-Op", which produced anti-aircraft guns.[6]

In 1994, Mogilevich group obtained control over Inkombank, one of the largest private banks in Russia,[7] in a secret deal with bank chairman Vladimir Vinogradov, getting direct access to the world financial system. The bank collapsed in 1998 under suspicions of money laundering.[8] Through Inkombank, in 1996 he obtained a significant share in Sukhoi, a large military aircraft manufacturer.[citation needed]

In May 1995, a meeting in Prague between Mogilevich and Sergei Mikhailov, head of the Solntsevo group, was raided by Czech police. The occasion was a birthday party for one of the deputy Solntsevo mafiosi. Two hundred partygoers (including dozens of prostitutes) in the restaurant "U Holubů" (owned by Mogilevich) were detained and thirty expelled from the country.[9] Police had been tipped off that the Solntsevo group intended to execute Mogilevich at the party[10] over a disputed payment of $5 million. But Mogilevich never showed and it is believed that a senior figure in the Czech police, working with the Russian mafia, had warned him.[11] Soon, however, the Czech Interior Ministry imposed a 10-year entry ban on Mogilevich, while the Hungarian government declared him persona non grata and the British barred his entry into the UK, declaring him "one of the most dangerous men in the world".[12]

Both Mogilevich and his associate Mikhailov ceased to travel to the west in the late 1990s, although Mogilevich retains an Israeli passport.[13] Until recently, they lived and operated in the Moscow area.[citation needed] In 1997 and 1998, the presence of Mogilevich, Mikhailov and others associated with the Russian Mafia behind a public company trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), YBM Magnex International Inc., was exposed by Canadian journalists. On May 13, 1998, dozens of agents for the FBI and several other U.S. government agencies raided YBM's headquarters in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Shares in the public company, which had been valued at $1 billion on the TSX, became worthless overnight.[14] As to Mogilevich himself, federal law enforcement agencies from throughout the world had by now been trying to prosecute him for over 10 years. But he had, in the words of one journalist, "a knack for never being in the wrong place at the wrong time."[15]

Until 1998, Inkombank and Bank Menatep participated in a US$ 10 billion money laundering scheme through the Bank of New York.[16][17][18][19]

Mogilevich was also suspected of participation in large scale fraud, where untaxed heating oil was sold as highly-taxed car fuel.[when?] Estimates are that up to one third of sold fuels went through this scheme, resulting in massive tax losses for countries of Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland).[20] In 2003, the FBI put Mogilevich on the "Wanted List" for participation in the scheme to defraud investors in Canadian company YBM Magnex International Inc. Frustrated in their previous efforts unsuccessfully to charge him for arms trafficking and prostitution, they had now settled on the large-scale fraud charges as their best hope of running him to ground. He was still, however, considered to be perhaps the most powerful Russian mobster alive.[13] In a 2006 interview, former Clinton administration anti-organized-crime czar Jon Winer said, "I can tell you that Semion Mogilevich is as serious an organized criminal as I have ever encountered and I am confident that he is responsible for contract killings."[13] He declined, however, to say who Mogilevich had killed.

Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow on January 24, 2008, for suspected tax evasion.[21] [22] He was released on July 24, 2009. The Russian interior ministry stated that the charges "are not of a particularly grave nature."[23][24]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Glenny, Misha (2008), McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp 72–73.
  2. ^ According to Ukrainian Prime-Minister Yulia Tymoshenko "we have no doubts whatsoever that the man named Mogilevich is behind the whole operation called RosUkrEnergo", see The High Price of Gas by BBC News. Mogilevich has denied through a lawyer any links to RosUkrEnergo, see Russia frees crime boss wanted by U.S. by Reuters.
  3. ^ Friedman, Robert I. (1998), “The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World”; The Village Voice, Tuesday, May 26th 1998.
  4. ^ Friedman (1998), Op. cit.
  5. ^ "Article about Mogilevich, also covers early years". http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9821,friedman,203,1.html. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  6. ^ "Article about activities in Hungary". http://www.budapestsun.com/full_story.asp?ArticleID=%7B6493A16274FB46438BE680B4A19AEE86%7D&From=News. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  7. ^ "New York court document, 2000". http://russianlaw.org/Morgent1.htm. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  8. ^ "Moscow Telegraph on investigation of Inkombank management". http://moscowtelegraph.com/mt050801.htm. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  9. ^ "Journal of the Czech ministry of interior, article about Russian mafias" (in Czech). http://www.mvcr.cz/2003/casopisy/pol/0409/rusko_info.html. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  10. ^ "Biography of Mogilevich, newspaper Lidové Noviny" (in Czech). http://www.volny.cz/vyber_cr/vyber2/pribeh_muze.html. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  11. ^ Glenny (2008), Op. cit., pp 71–72.
  12. ^ Glenny (2008), Op. cit., pp 75.
  13. ^ a b c Glenny (2008), Op. cit., pg 77.
  14. ^ "BBC Panorama's "The Billion Dollar Don"". http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/panorama/transcripts/transcript_06_12_99.txt. Retrieved September 15, 2007. 
  15. ^ Glenny (2008), Op. cit., pg 76.
  16. ^ "Overview of the money laundering schemes". http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/3516.html##4. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  17. ^ The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 1999: "A Scheme for Ducking Taxes May Be a Key In Russia Money Probe"
  18. ^ "Testimony of Thomas Renyi, CEO of the bank, 1999". http://financialservices.house.gov/banking/92299ren.htm. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  19. ^ "Senior manager of BoNY indicted, 2001". http://russianlaw.org/bridge3.htm. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  20. ^ "Overview of fuels scandal, newspaper Lidové Noviny" (in Czech). http://web.volny.cz/noviny/zdomova/clanek/~volny/IDC/124259/volby-by-nyni-vyhrala-cssd.html. Retrieved October 7, 2006. 
  21. ^ "Russia detains crime boss wanted by FBI"
  22. ^ "Semyon Mogilevich, the 'East European mafia boss', captured in Moscow"
  23. ^ "Suspects in Arbat Prestige case released with travel ban"
  24. ^ Russia frees crime boss wanted by U.S., Reuters (July 27, 2009)

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semion_Mogilevich"