Semion Mogilevich
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Semion Mogilevich
FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive
Charges
Alias Seva Moguilevich
Semon Yudkovich Palagnyuk
Semen Yukovich Telesh
Simeon Mogilevitch
Semjon Mogilevcs
Shimon Makelwitsh
Shimon Makhelwitsch
Sergei Yurevich Schnaider
Description
Born Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich
June 30, 1946 (age 72)
Kiev,
Ukrainian SSR,
Soviet Union
Nationality Ukrainian, Russian, Hungarian, Israeli
Height 168 cm (5 ft 6 in)
Weight 130 kg (290 lb)
Occupation Russian mafia boss, confidence trickster, businessman
Spouse Katalin Papp
Status
Added October 23, 2009
Removed December 17, 2015
Number 494
Removed from Top Ten Fugitive List
Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich[1] ,
Semen Yudkovych Mohylevych [sɛˈmɛn ˈjudkɔwɪtʃ mɔɦɪˈlɛwɪtʃ]; born June 30, 1946) is a Ukrainian-born, Russian
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.
[2] Mogilevich is believed to direct a vast criminal empire and is described by the FBI as "the most dangerous mobster in the world."
[3][4] He has been accused by the FBI of "weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale."
[5]
Mogilevich's nicknames include "Don Semyon" and "The Brainy Don" (because of his business acumen).
[6] According to US diplomatic cables, he is said to control
RosUkrEnergo, a company actively involved in
Russia–Ukraine gas disputes, and a partner of
Raiffeisen Bank.
[7]
He lives freely in
Moscow, and has three children. He is most closely associated with the
Solntsevskaya Bratva crime group. Political figures he has close alliances with include
Yury Luzhkov, the former Mayor of Moscow,
Dmytro Firtash and
Leonid Derkach, former head of the
Security Service of Ukraine.
[8][9] 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.
[10] Defector
Alexander Litvinenko, shortly before his assassination, claimed that Mogilevich had a "good relationship" with
Vladimir Putin since the 1990s.
[11]
Contents
Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]
Mogilevich was born in 1946 to a
Jewish family in
Kiev's
Podol neighborhood.
[12]
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.
[4]
Beginning in the early 1980s, according to the FBI, Mogilevich was the key money-laundering contact for the
Solntsevskaya Bratva.
[13]
Hungary[edit]
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.
[14]
In 1994, the Mogilevich group obtained control over
Inkombank, one of the largest private banks in Russia,
[15] 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.
[16]
Czech raid[edit]
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 30 expelled from the country.
[17] Police had been tipped off that the Solntsevo group intended to execute Mogilevich at the party
[18] 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.
[19] Soon, however, the Czech Interior Ministry imposed a 10-year entry ban on Mogilevich, while the Hungarian government declared him
persona non grataand the British barred his entry into the UK, declaring him "one of the most dangerous men in the world."
[20]
Toronto exchange[edit]
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.
[21]
Money laundering and tax evasion[edit]
Until 1998, Inkombank and
Bank Menatep participated in a US$10 billion
money laundering scheme through the
Bank of New York.
[22][23][24][25] 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).
[26] In the Czech Republic the scandal is estimated to have cost the taxpayers around 100 billion CZK (≈US$5 billion)
[27] and involved, besides others, murders and assassination attempt of a journalist writing about the problem.
[28]
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.
[29] 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."
[29]
Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow on January 24, 2008, for suspected
tax evasion.
[30][31] 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".
[32][33]
Ivan Fursin [
uk] has been closely linked to Mogilevich.
[34]
FBI Ten Most Wanted list[edit]
On October 22, 2009, he was named by the FBI as the
494th fugitive to be placed on the
Ten Most Wanted list.
[35] 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.
[36]
In spite of the warrants issued against him, he still lives freely in Moscow, according to the FBI.
[37] 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".
[38]
Semion Mogilevich - Wikipedia