Semion Mogilevich

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In this Eastern Slavic naming convention, the patronymic is Yudkovich and the family name is Mogilevich.
Semion Mogilevich
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 75)
Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
NationalityUkrainian, Russian, Hungarian, Israeli
Height168 cm (5 ft 6 in)
Weight130 kg (290 lb)
OccupationRussian mafia boss, confidence trickster, businessman
Spouse
Tatiana Markova
​
(divorced)​
Galina Grigorieva
​
(divorced)​
Katalin Papp
​
(m. 1991)​
ChildrenAt least 3[1]
Status
AddedOctober 23, 2009[2]
RemovedDecember 17, 2015
Number494
Removed from Top Ten Fugitive List

Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich[3] (Ukrainian: Семен Юдкович Могилевич, romanized: Semén Júdkovych Mohylévych [seˈmɛn ˈjudkowɪtʃ moɦɪˈlɛwɪtʃ]; born June 30, 1946) is a Ukrainian-born, Russian organized crime boss. He quickly built a highly structured criminal organization, in the mode of a traditional American mafia family. Indeed, many of the organization’s 250 members are his relatives.[4] He is described by agencies in the European Union and United States as the "boss of bosses" of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world,[5] he is believed to direct a vast criminal empire and is described by the FBI as "the most dangerous mobster in the world."[6][4] He has been accused by the FBI of "weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale."[7]

Mogilevich's nicknames include "Don Semyon" and "The Brainy Don" (because of his business acumen).[8] According to US diplomatic cables, he controls RosUkrEnergo,[9] a company actively involved in Russia–Ukraine gas disputes, and a partner of Raiffeisen Bank.

Mogilevich currently lives freely in Moscow, and has three children. He is most closely associated with the Solntsevskaya Bratva crime group. He 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.[10][11][12] 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.[13] Russian FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko, shortly before his assassination, claimed that Mogilevich had a "good relationship" with Vladimir Putin since the 1990s.[14][15][a]

William Sessions, former FBI Director from 1987 to 1993 during the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (41), was Mogilevich's attorney in the United States until Sessions' death on June 12, 2020.[18][19]

Biography[]

Early life[]

Mogilevich was born in 1946 to a Jewish family in Kyiv's Podil neighborhood.[20] He graduated in economics from the University of Lviv.[21]

His first significant fortune derived from scamming fellow Soviet Jews (mainly Ukrainians and Russians) eager to emigrate to countries such as Israel, the place where Mogilevich himself settled in 1990. According to some reports, Mogilevich earned a lot of money as an intermediary selling jewelry and artwork belonging to Jews who emigrated from Kyiv in the 1980s.[22] 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.[4]

In the 1980s, according to the FBI, Mogilevich was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva.[23]

Hungary[]

In early 1991, Mogilevich moved to Hungary and married his Hungarian girlfriend Katalin Papp. He has at least three children: a daughter by ex-wife Tatiana Markova, a son with ex-wife Galina Grigorieva, and a son with Papp.[1] Through his marriage to Papp, he 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.[24]

In 1994, the Mogilevich group obtained control over Inkombank, one of the largest private banks in Russia,[25] 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.[26]

His Hungarian mafia is closely associated with People's Republic of China mafia especially from Fujian (Fuiying) (Russian: Фуцзянь (Фуйин)) and Zhejiang (Zheiyang) (Russian: Чжэцзян (Жейианг)).[27]

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.[28] Police had been tipped off that the Solntsevo group intended to execute Mogilevich at the party[29] 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.[30] Soon after, the Czech Interior Ministry imposed a ten-year entry ban on him, 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."[31]

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.[32]

Toxic waste scheme with Italian American Mafia[]

In 1998, an FBI informant told the bureau that one of Mogilevich’s chief lieutenants in Los Angeles met two Russians from New York City with Genovese crime family ties to broker a scheme to dump American toxic waste in Russia. Mogilevich’s man from L.A. said the Red Mafia would dispose of the toxic waste in the Chernobyl region, "probably through payoffs to the decontamination authorities there," says a classified FBI report.[4]

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.[33][34][35][36] 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).[37] In the Czech Republic the scandal is estimated to have cost the taxpayers around 100 billion CZK (≈US$5 billion)[38] and involved, besides others, murders and the attempted assassination of a journalist writing about the problem.[39]

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 considered to be the most powerful Russian mobster alive.[40] 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."[40]

Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow on January 24, 2008, for suspected tax evasion.[41][42] 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".[43][44]

 [uk] has been closely linked to Mogilevich.[45]

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.[46] 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.[47]

According to FBI reports, Mogilevich had alliances with the Camorra, in particular with Salvatore DeFalco, a lower-echelon member of the Giuliano clan. Mogilevich and DeFalco would have held meetings in Prague in 1993.[48][49]

In spite of the warrants issued against him, he still lives freely in Moscow, according to the FBI.[50] 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".[51]

Both Mogilevich and his associate Mikhailov ceased to travel to the West in the late 1990s.[40]

See also[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ In the Mykola Melnychenko recordings of 2000, Derkach, who is close to Mogilevich, states that Vladimir Putin is also very close to Mogilevich since Putin's early days in Lenningrad.[16][17]

References[]

  1. ^ a b Warnock, Caroline (January 26, 2021). "Semion Mogilevich's Wife & Kids: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know". Heavy. Archived from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  2. ^ "New Top Ten - Global Con Artist". FBI (in American English). Retrieved October 6, 2019.
  3. ^ "FBI puts crime boss Mogilevich on Ten Most Wanted list". RIANOVOSTI. October 23, 2009. Retrieved March 29, 2014.
  4. ^ a b c d Friedman, Robert I. (May 26, 1998). "The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World". The Village Voice. Retrieved January 22, 2008.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ Goldman, Marshall I. (2008). Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-534073-0.
  7. ^ Peters, Justin (August 5, 2013). "This Obese Mob Boss Is Twice the Villain Whitey Bulger Ever Was". Slate.com. Retrieved April 4, 2014.
  8. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on March 16, 2010. Retrieved November 9, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. ^ 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. He has denied through a lawyer any links to RosUkrEnergo, see Russia frees crime boss wanted by U.S. by Reuters.
  10. ^ Ukraine, Vanco Energy and the Russian Mob, Eurasia Daily Monitor, September 16, 2008.
  11. ^ Rachkevych, Mark (December 3, 2010). "U.S. Official: Austrian Bank's Ties to RosUkrEnergo Suspicious". Kyiv Post. Retrieved December 14, 2010.
  12. ^ Weiss, Michael (March 19, 2014). "Married to the Ukrainian Mob". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
  13. ^ Byrne, Peter (December 10, 2010). "New and conflicting details emerge over Mogilevich's alleged involvement in nation". kyivpost.com. Retrieved April 8, 2014.
  14. ^ Listen: Alexander Litvinenko's apparent warning before his death By Lyndsey Telford, Edward Malnick and Claire Newell 12:00PM GMT 23 January 2015.
  15. ^ "Litvinenko Ties Putin to Crime Lord From Beyond Grave". www.occrp.org. Retrieved June 9, 2020.
  16. ^ Sterbenz, Christina (December 1, 2014). "The worst gangster most people have never heard of". Business Insider. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  17. ^ Kupchinsky, Roman (March 25, 2009). "The Strange Ties between Semion Mogilevich and Vladimir Putin". Jamestown Foundation, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 57. Retrieved October 22, 2020.
  18. ^ Unger 2018, p. 218.
  19. ^ Heffernan, Virginia (January 14, 2018). "Column: A close reading of Glenn Simpson's Trump-Russia testimony". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 25, 2021.
  20. ^ 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.
  21. ^ "Могилевич, Семен Бизнесмен". lenta.ru. Retrieved June 11, 2021.
  22. ^ "Семен Могилевич. Венгерское досье // Оперативная справка венгерских спецслужб в отношении Могилевича - Компромат.Ру / Compromat.Ru". www.compromat.ru. Retrieved June 11, 2021.
  23. ^ 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 November 5, 2017.
  24. ^ "Article about activities in Hungary". Archived from the original on March 2, 2012. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  25. ^ "New York court document, 2000". Archived from the original on July 1, 2007. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  26. ^ "Moscow Telegraph on investigation of Inkombank management". Moscow Telegraph. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  27. ^ "Оперативная справка венгерских спецслужб в отношении Могилевича (Могилевич Семен Юдкович: Венгерское досье)" [Operational information from the Hungarian special services regarding Mogilevich (Mogilevich Yudkovich: Hungarian dossier)]. FreeLance Bureau (flb.ru) (in Russian). July 19, 2000. Archived from the original on August 26, 2001. Retrieved June 29, 2021.
  28. ^ "Journal of the Czech ministry of interior, article about Russian mafias" (in Czech). Archived from the original on January 14, 2007. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  29. ^ "Biography of Mogilevich". Lidové Noviny (in Czech). Archived from the original on November 9, 2004. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  30. ^ Glenny (2008), pp 71–72.
  31. ^ Glenny (2008), pp 75.
  32. ^ "BBC Panorama's "The Billion Dollar Don"". BBC News. Retrieved September 15, 2007.
  33. ^ "Overview of the money laundering schemes". Archived from the original on October 5, 2006. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  34. ^ The Wall Street Journal, September 5, 1999: "A Scheme for Ducking Taxes May Be a Key In Russia Money Probe"
  35. ^ "Testimony of Thomas Renyi, CEO of the bank, 1999". Archived from the original on September 29, 2006. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  36. ^ "Senior manager of BoNY indicted, 2001". Archived from the original on August 14, 2007. Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  37. ^ "Overview of fuels scandal". Lidové Noviny (in Czech). Retrieved October 7, 2006.
  38. ^ Podvody s LTO zřejmě přišly stát na 100 miliard (Czech)
  39. ^ Nelegální obchody s LTO přinesly daňové úniky i vraždy (Czech)
  40. ^ a b c Glenny (2008), pg 77.
  41. ^ Guy Faulconbridge (January 25, 2008). "Russia detains crime boss wanted by FBI". Reuters. Retrieved March 29, 2014.
  42. ^ "Login". timesonline.co.uk.
  43. ^ "Suspects in Arbat Prestige case released with travel ban". rian.ru. July 27, 2009.
  44. ^ Russia frees crime boss wanted by U.S., Reuters (July 27, 2009)
  45. ^ Betsy Woodruff (November 2, 2017). "Mueller Reveals New Manafort Link to Organized Crime". TheDailyBeast.com. Retrieved November 5, 2017.
  46. ^ "FBI — New Top Ten - Global Con Artist". FBI. Archived from the original on October 8, 2010.
  47. ^ Babay, Emily (December 17, 2015) Philly fugitive bumped off FBI 'Most Wanted' list Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved January 16, 2016.
  48. ^ Federal Bureau of Investigation (1996). SEMION MOGILEVICH ORGANIZATION EURASIAN ORGANIZED CRIME (1996).
  49. ^ C. Williams, Robert (January 30, 2019). Useful Assets. Dorrance Publishing Co. Inc. p. 25.
  50. ^ "FBI — SEMION MOGILEVICH". FBI.
  51. ^ Glenny (2008), pg 76.
  • Unger, Craig (August 14, 2018). House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. Dutton. ISBN 978-1524743505.

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