First: A short “introduction” from Wikipedia: Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich (June 30, 1946 in Kiev, Ukraine, in Russian Семен Могилевич, also written as Semyon) is a notorious organized crime boss who is believed to control the largest Russian Mafia syndicate in the world. His business activities are alleged to include arms dealing, drug trafficking, prostitution and money laundering. He is nicknamed "The Brainy Don", because of his business abilities and because he holds a degree in Economics from the Lviv University.
And from the FBI:
Aliases:
Seva Moguilevich, Semon Yudkovich Palagnyuk, Semen Yukovich Telesh, Simeon Mogilevitch, Semjon Mogilevcs, Shimon Makelwitsh, Shimon Makhelwitsch, "Seva"
DESCRIPTION
Date of Birth Used: June 30, 1946
Hair: Gray (Balding)
Place of Birth: Kiev, Ukraine
Eyes: Green
Height: 5'6" to 5'7"
Sex: Male
Weight: 290 pounds
Race: White
NCIC: W874119382
Nationality: Ukrainian
Occupation: Businessman
Scars and Marks: Mogilevich has pockmarks on his face.
Remarks:
Mogilevich may wear facial hair to include a moustache. He is known to be a heavy smoker. Mogilevich has his primary residence in Moscow, Russia, but also has ties to the United States and England. He utilizes a Russian passport.
CAUTION
Semion Mogilevich, Igor L'Vovich Fisherman, and Anatoli Tsoura are all wanted for their alleged participation in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors in the stock of YBM Magnex International, Inc. (YBM), a public company incorporated in Canada, but headquartered in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Investors lost more than 150 million dollars through the alleged scheme that included inflating stock values, preparing bogus financial books and records, lying to Securities and Exchange Commission officials, and offering bribes to accountants. The scheme to defraud collapsed on May 13, 1998, when federal search warrants were executed in Pennsylvania and trading of the YBM stock was suspended by the Ontario Securities Exchange. A federal indictment, issued for the men on April 24, 2003, in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, charges them all with 45 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering.
The indictment alleges that between 1993 and September of 1998, Semion Mogilevich headed and controlled the Mogilevich Enterprise, an association which consisted of the aforementioned individuals and a network of companies in over twenty different countries which orchestrated a sophisticated scheme to defraud investors in YBM stock. The scheme was allegedly funded and authorized by Mogilevich. This complex network of corporations was set up to create the illusion that YBM was engaged in a profitable international business, primarily the industrial magnet market. Igor Fisherman served as the Chief Operating Officer of YBM on behalf of Mogilevich, who was YBM's major shareholder. Anatoli Tsoura was the Vice President of Finance for YBM's main subsidiary.
SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS AND AN ESCAPE RISK IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THIS CASE, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL FBI OFFICE OR THE NEAREST AMERICAN EMBASSY OR CONSULATE.
Warsaw, Poland-Last week, a group of 50 armed members of a Russian Police commando arrested Semyon Mogilevich in Moscow, near the Russian capital’s World Trade Center. The man, 61, presented himself as Sergei Shnaider, a “respectable businesman” and husband of a 33-year-old woman lawyer, Ms. Olga Shneider, whom he had married some time ago. And, oh yes, he had incidentally changed his family name yet one more time.
Russian media report that “Mr. Sergei Shneider” (born Semyon Mogilevich) will face “tax evasion charges”.
Suspected crime boss Semyon Mogilevich – writes Robert Amsterdam’s blog “
Russia News Blast” - is to be charged with large-scale tax evasion on January 30, 2008.
Mogilevich will be charged along with Arbat Prestige Cosmetics owner Vladimir Nekrasov, with whom Mogilevich was arrested last week in central Moscow. If convicted, they could face up to six years in prison.
At almost the same time an investigative journalist, Oleg Lurye, “famous for losing high-profile libel cases and incurring heavy fines from courts,” has been arrested on charges of extortion and fraud. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has blasted allegations by former double agent Sergei Tretyakov that Russian spies helped the government siphon $500 million from the UN's oil-for-food program, calling them “PR for treason”. Lurye, 44, worked as an investigative reporter for Express-Gazeta, Versia, and Novaya Gazeta, as well as for several Internet news portals. He skyrocketed to fame in 2003 when a court ruled that two articles he wrote about billionaire Mikhail Fridman's Alfa Group and published in Versia were libelous and ordered the newspaper to pay 6 million rubles to Fridman and Alfa Bank president Pyotr Aven. In 2001, Lurye and Novaya Gazeta lost a libel case filed by Viktor Stolpovsky, head of the Swiss company Mercata Trading, over an article alleging that Stolpovsky, whose firm oversaw a scandalously expensive renovation of the Kremlin in the late 1990s, bought a mansion in Switzerland for then-President Boris Yeltsin's family.
What do Mogilevich, Nekrasov and Lurye have in common? It’s a sign that the “perverted justice” in Putin’s Russia has begun a sweeping campaign both against some long-tolerated criminals and against genuine critics of the regime’s black deals, especially these involving special services.
Semyon Mogilevich has been my “darling” for a very long time. We are both over 60 years old. We were both raised in Communist countries. We were both in Communist jails, though for different reasons: “Brainy Don” for theft and David Dastych for alleged spying against the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Semyon Mogilevich, a Ukrainian Jew, stole the property of Ukrainian and Russian Jews allowed to emigrate form the USSR to Israel. In 1990, he moved to Israel and developed a wide network of drug smuggling, illegal arms deals, prostitution and financial scams through a number of off-shore companies. He made millions of dollars and gradually became of the most powerful “Godfathers” of the Russian mafia.
In 1990, I was freed from a Communist jail in Poland and I began to work with the Israeli Embassy to help Jewish immigration from the former USSR. In the Winter of 1992, I went to Israel – with a small group of tourists from Poland. All of them remained there to take illegal jobs. Free to move around, I met my old friend, the late Shalheveth Freier, a distinguished member of the Israeli Establishment, nuclear expert and former head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. We dined at the historic King David Hotel in Jerusalem, and my friend alerted me to the huge illegal proliferation of nuclear materials, weapon-parts, technology and nuclear experts from countries of the former USSR. I decided to engage myself in the international monitoring of the nuclear black market.
At some points, my work “coincided” with the black market deals of “Brainy Don” and his acolytes – I met them in Switzerland, Luxemburg and Lichtenstein, Germany, also in Hungary, Bulgaria and Russia. These people acted professionally, they had links to banks and financial companies all over the world. They offered rare nuclear isotopes and also weapon-grade uranium and plutonium. In one case, I got information about a big transaction on expensive nuclear materials being prepared by a Russian “business group” in Germany. I obtained full contract of this transaction and I gave it to the CIA station in Paris. No reaction. Seemingly Langley wasn’t interested.
In 1991, Semyon Mogilevich and his “traders” moved to Hungary and they invested into the then Hungarian state-owned armaments industry. Soon Mogilevich’s business group owned a big share of the Hungarian weapon-producing factories. But they never stopped expanding their business. About 1993, Mogilevich joined a Solncevo crime syndicate in Moscow and became a key player in the Russian mafia. In 1995, Mogilevich was expelled from Hungary and he moved his business center to Prague, in the Czech Republic. There a meeting between Mogilevich and the Solntsevo group at the restaurant "U Holubů" owned by Mogilevich, was raided by police. Two hundred people (including dozens of prostitutes) were detained, and thirty expelled from the country. It was rumored that the Solntsevo group intended to execute Mogilevich at that meeting. But “Brainy Don” survived. In Russia he controlled the INCOMBANK and then he bought shares in the military aircraft manufacturer SUKHOY. Incombank collapsed in 1988.
There are rumors from many various sources, that in 1966 Mogilevich facilitated for Osama bin Laden, a purchase of Soviet-made backpack nuclear devices, acting through Ukrainian and Chechen mafia groups. This deal was supposed to be financed by an Iraqi-born billionaire from Britain, Salah Idris.
In 1997, he allegedly financed selling three tons of stolen enriched uranium. The deal failed when Czech police detained some of its participants in Karlovy Vary, the city known as a holiday resort of Russian mobsters.
In 1997 and 1998, the presence of Mogilevich, Sergei Mikhailov and others associated with the Russian Mafia behind a public company, YBM Magnex International Inc.--trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange--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 $1 billion on the TSE, became worthless overnight. The FBI put Mogilewich on the "Wanted by the FBI List" in 2003 for participation in a scheme to defraud investors in Canadian company YBM Magnex International Inc. Until 1998, Mogilevich’s Inkombank and Bank Menatep participated in a US$ 10 billion money laundering scheme through the Bank of New York. Mogilevich was also suspected in participation in a large scale fraud where un-taxed heating oil was sold as highly taxed car fuel. Estimates are that up to one third of sold fuels went through this scheme, resulting in massive tax losses for the countries of Central Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia). A similar system was developed in Poland by a Polish “fuel mafia”, with the help of the Solncevo Russian mafia, operating in Poland.
With shades of Chicago mobster Al Capone, Semyon Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow on January 24, 2008, for suspected tax evasion. What next? We shall see.
