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Semion Mogilevich

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Semion Mogilevich
File:SEMION MOGILEVICH.jpg
FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive
Charges
AliasSeva Moguilevich
Semon Yudkovich Palagnyuk
Semen Yukovich Telesh
Simeon Mogilevitch
Semjon Mogilevcs
Shimon Makelwitsh
Shimon Makhelwitsch
Sergei Yurevich Schnaider
Description
BornSemion Yudkovich Mogilevich
(1946-06-30) June 30, 1946 (age 78)
Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
NationalityUkrainian, Russian, Hungarian, Israeli
Height168 cm (5 ft 6 in)
Weight130 kg (290 lb)
OccupationRussian mafia boss, confidence trickster, businessman
SpouseKatalin Papp
Children3
Status
AddedOctober 23, 2009[1]
RemovedDecember 17, 2015
Number494
Removed from Top Ten Fugitive List

Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich[2] (Ukrainian: Семе́н Ю́дкович Могиле́вич, romanized: Semén Júdkovych Mohylévych [seˈmɛn ˈjudkowɪtʃ moɦɪˈlɛwɪtʃ]; born June 30, 1946) is a Ukrainian-born, Russian organized crime boss, described by agencies in the European Union and United States as the "boss of bosses" of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world.[3] Mogilevich is believed to direct a vast criminal empire and is described by the FBI as "the most dangerous mobster in the world."[4][5] He has been accused by the FBI of "weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale."[6]

Mogilevich's nicknames include "Don Semyon" and "The Brainy Don" (because of his business acumen).[7] According to US diplomatic cables, he is said to control RosUkrEnergo, [8] a company actively involved in Russia–Ukraine gas disputes, and a partner of Raiffeisen Bank.

He now lives freely in Moscow, and has three children. He is most closely associated with the Solntsevskaya Bratva crime group. Mogilevich has close alliances with political figures including Yury Luzhkov, the former Mayor of Moscow, Dmytro Firtash, and Leonid Derkach, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine.[9][10] Oleksandr Turchynov, who was designated as acting President of Ukraine in February 2014, appeared in court in 2010 for allegedly destroying files pertaining to Mogilevich.[11] Russian FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko, shortly before his assassination, claimed that Mogilevich had a "good relationship" with Vladimir Putin since the 1990s.[12][13]

Biography

Early life

Mogilevich was born in 1946 to a Jewish family in Kiev's Podol neighborhood.[14]

His first significant fortune derived from scamming fellow Russian Jews eager to emigrate to countries including the United States and Israel; Mogilevich made deals to buy their assets, sell them for fair market value, and forward the proceeds. Instead he simply sold the assets and pocketed the proceeds. He served two terms in prison, of 3 and 4 years, for currency-dealing offenses.[5]

Beginning in the early 1980s, according to the FBI, Mogilevich was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva.[15]

Hungary

In early 1991, Mogilevich moved to Hungary and married his Hungarian girlfriend Katalin Papp. He had three children with her, and obtained a Hungarian passport. 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.[16]

In 1994, the Mogilevich group obtained control over Inkombank, one of the largest private banks in Russia,[17] 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.[18]

Czech raid

In May 1995, a meeting in Prague between Mogilevich and Sergei Mikhailov, head of the Solntsevskaya Bratva, 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 30 expelled from the country.[19] Police had been tipped off that the Solntsevo group intended to execute Mogilevich at the party[20] over a disputed payment of $5 million. But Mogilevich never showed up and it is believed that a senior figure in the Czech police, working with the Russian mafia, had warned him.[21] 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."[22]

Toronto exchange

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.[23]

Money laundering and tax evasion

Until 1998, Inkombank and Bank Menatep participated in a US$10 billion money laundering scheme through the Bank of New York.[24][25][26][27] Mogilevich was also suspected of participation in large-scale tax fraud, where untaxed heating oil was sold as highly taxed car fuel – one of the greatest scandals that broke around 1990–1991.

Estimates are that up to one-third of fuels sold went through this scheme, resulting in massive tax losses for various countries of Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland).[28] In the Czech Republic the scandal is estimated to have cost the taxpayers around 100 billion CZK (≈US$5 billion)[29] and involved, besides others, murders and the attempted assassination of a journalist writing about the problem.[30]

In 2003, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation put Mogilevich on the "Wanted List" for participation in the scheme to defraud investors in Canadian company YBM Magnex International Inc. Frustrated by their previous unsuccessful efforts 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, however, considered to be the most powerful Russian mobster alive.[31] 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."[31]

Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow on January 24, 2008, for suspected tax evasion.[32][33] His bail was placed, and he was released on July 24, 2009. On his release, the Russian interior ministry stated that he was released because the charges against him "are not of a particularly grave nature".[34][35]

Ivan Fursin [uk] has been closely linked to Mogilevich.[36]

FBI Ten Most Wanted list

On October 22, 2009, he was named by the FBI as the 494th fugitive to be placed on the Ten Most Wanted list.[37] In December 2015 he was removed from the list. The FBI indicated he no longer met list criteria, for reasons relating to living in a country with which the United States does not maintain an extradition treaty.[38]

In spite of the warrants issued against him, he still lives freely in Moscow, according to the FBI.[39] As to Mogilevich himself, government law enforcement agencies from throughout the world had by then 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".[40]

Both Mogilevich and his associate Mikhailov ceased to travel to the West in the late 1990s.[31]

See also

References

  1. ^ "New Top Ten - Global Con Artist". FBI. Retrieved 2019-10-06.
  2. ^ "FBI puts crime boss Mogilevich on Ten Most Wanted list". RIANOVOSTI. October 23, 2009. Retrieved March 29, 2014.
  3. ^ Glenny, Misha (2008). McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 72–73. ISBN 978-1-4000-4411-5.
  4. ^ Goldman, Marshall I. (2008). Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-534073-0.
  5. ^ a b Robert I. Friedman (22 January 2008). "The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World". villagevoice.com.
  6. ^ Peters, Justin (August 5, 2013). "This Obese Mob Boss Is Twice the Villain Whitey Bulger Ever Was". Slate.com. Retrieved April 4, 2014.
  7. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2010-03-16. Retrieved 2010-11-09.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ Ukraine, Vanco Energy and the Russian Mob, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 16 September 2008.
  10. ^ Rachkevych, Mark (3 December 2010). "U.S. Official: Austrian Bank's Ties to RosUkrEnergo Suspicious". Kyiv Post. Retrieved 14 December 2010.
  11. ^ Byrne, Peter (December 10, 2010). "New and conflicting details emerge over Mogilevich's alleged involvement in nation". kyivpost.com. Retrieved April 8, 2014.
  12. ^ Listen: Alexander Litvinenko's apparent warning before his death By Lyndsey Telford, Edward Malnick and Claire Newell12:00PM GMT 23 Jan 2015
  13. ^ "Litvinenko Ties Putin to Crime Lord From Beyond Grave". www.occrp.org. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  14. ^ Block, Alan A.; Weaver, Constance A. (2004) All Is Clouded by Desire: Global Banking, Money Laundering, and International Organized Crime. Greenwood Publishing Group: Westport. ISBN 0-275-98330-7 p. 1
  15. ^ Craig Unger (July 13, 2017). "Trump's Russian Laundromat; How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House". Newrepublic.com. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
  16. ^ "Article about activities in Hungary". Archived from the original on March 2, 2012. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  17. ^ "New York court document, 2000". Archived from the original on July 1, 2007. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  18. ^ "Moscow Telegraph on investigation of Inkombank management". Moscow Telegraph. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  19. ^ "Journal of the Czech ministry of interior, article about Russian mafias" (in Czech). Archived from the original on 2007-01-14. Retrieved 2006-10-07.
  20. ^ "Biography of Mogilevich". Lidové Noviny (in Czech). Archived from the original on 2004-11-09. Retrieved 2006-10-07.
  21. ^ Glenny (2008), Op. cit., pp 71–72.
  22. ^ Glenny (2008), Op. cit., pp 75.
  23. ^ "BBC Panorama's "The Billion Dollar Don"". BBC News. Retrieved 2007-09-15.
  24. ^ "Overview of the money laundering schemes". Archived from the original on October 5, 2006. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  25. ^ The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 1999: "A Scheme for Ducking Taxes May Be a Key In Russia Money Probe"
  26. ^ "Testimony of Thomas Renyi, CEO of the bank, 1999". Archived from the original on 2006-09-29. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  27. ^ "Senior manager of BoNY indicted, 2001". Archived from the original on 2007-08-14. Retrieved 2006-10-07.
  28. ^ "Overview of fuels scandal". Lidové Noviny (in Czech). Retrieved 2006-10-07.
  29. ^ Podvody s LTO zřejmě přišly stát na 100 miliard (Czech)
  30. ^ Nelegální obchody s LTO přinesly daňové úniky i vraždy (Czech)
  31. ^ a b c Glenny (2008), Op. cit., pg 77.
  32. ^ Guy Faulconbridge (January 25, 2008). "Russia detains crime boss wanted by FBI". Reuters. Retrieved March 29, 2014.
  33. ^ "Login". timesonline.co.uk.
  34. ^ "Suspects in Arbat Prestige case released with travel ban". rian.ru. 27 July 2009.
  35. ^ Russia frees crime boss wanted by U.S., Reuters (July 27, 2009)
  36. ^ Betsy Woodruff (2 November 2017). "Mueller Reveals New Manafort Link to Organized Crime". TheDailyBeast.com. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
  37. ^ "FBI — New Top Ten - Global Con Artist". FBI. Archived from the original on 2010-10-08.
  38. ^ Babay, Emily (December 17, 2015) Philly fugitive bumped off FBI 'Most Wanted' list Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved January 16, 2016.
  39. ^ "FBI — SEMION MOGILEVICH". FBI.
  40. ^ Glenny (2008), Op. cit., pg 76.
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