Russian Mafia in Florida - Miami Herald - 5Jul98
Stefan Lemieszewski
Feedback from earlier postings expressed bewilderment at
why a company like Itera was registered in Florida, USA. This
is the "middleman" company that has the rights to supply
natural gas to heavily-dependent Ukraine by buying it from
Gazprom. Recently we learned that the secretive Itera paid
the current California prison-resident and former prime
minister Pavlo Lazarenko at least $25,000,000 in 1996.
But the above is just one example of the growing importance
of Florida to the Russian Mafia. Below are a few more examples,
including a mini-mafia summit meeting in Miami in 1993 to
divvy up "government-owned hotels and factories that were
privatized that year." Such are the decisions made on those
"economic reform" policies of privatization in eastern Europe.
Whereas the various Italian Mafia crime families in United
States have been estimated at 2,000 members, one Russian
Mafia gangster, Anzor Kikalischvili, claimed to have 600 mafia
employees in Miami alone. Kikalischvili is the one with ties to
NHL superstar Pavel Bure (both involved in 21st Century
Association in Moscow), Joseph Kobzon (the "Russian Frank
Sinatra" that sings for Leonid Kuchma), and Ludwig "Tarzan"
Fainberg (criminal drug and arms dealer; former owner of
Porky's in Florida; currently running a bar in Tel Aviv). Anzor
Kikalischvili was the head of the Russian Youth Sports League
before becoming the head of the Russian Olympic Committee.
Sergei "Mikhas" Mikhailov also made deals in Miami. The ties
between Mikhailov/Solntsevo and Boris Birshtein, Oleksandr
Volkov, Grigori Loutchansky, Vadym Rabinovich, et. al. have
been posted earlier,
Meyer Lansky's tradition in Florida carries on.
Stefan Lemieszewski
===========================================
Miami Herald
5Jul98
Russian Mafia Thrives In South Florida
By Juan O. Tamayo, Herald Staff Writer
When Russian nightclub owner Oleg Kirillov decided
to fly to Miami last December and spend his New Year's
vacation in the sun and surf, the FBI got ready to
celebrate, too.
Pegged as the head of a powerful Russian crime gang,
the 31-year-old Kirillov was arrested by FBI agents soon
after he arrived and was charged with conspiracy to
export cocaine from Miami to Moscow.
Yet the bust got little publicity, perhaps because Kirillov
was only one of scores of Russian mobsters who visit
South Florida, perhaps because his is only one of the
dozen or so Russian gangs known to operate here.
[ . . . ]
Some clear evidence of the Russian mob's presence here:
**Sergei Aksyonov, reputed head of Russia's second-largest
and most violent gang -- ``No. 2 with a bullet,'' one FBI official
joked -recently bought several luxury condos on north Collins
Avenue through two relatives.
**Anzor Kikalischvili, a Russian businessman denied a U.S.
entry visa last year for alleged ties to crime gangs, bragged
in a 1996 FBI wiretap that he had 600 employees in Miami
alone.
**Four of Russia's highest-ranking mobsters met in Miami
in 1993 to decide how their gangs would split up the
government-owned hotels and factories that were privatized
that year, law enforcement officers who watched them say.
[ . . . ]
That squad is in addition to Odessa, a joint task force of
Miami-area U.S. and local law enforcement agencies,
financed with federal funds, that began monitoring the
Russian mob in South Florida around 1993.
Odessa has scored some victories, most notably last
year's arrest of Ludwig Fainberg, Ukrainian-born owner
of the Porky's strip club in Hialeah, and 20 others on drug,
weapons, counterfeit money, prostitution and stolen liquor
charges.
[ . . . ]
A Deal-Making Center
[ . . . ]
Their penetration of America began after top mobsters
met near Moscow in 1992 and voted to send one of their
own, Vyacheslav Ivankov, to explore opportunities in New
York's huge Brighton Beach emigre community.
Within months, Ivankov was spotted in Miami. And soon
afterward, the mob began popping up in other U.S. cities,
including Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia.
[ . . .]
Ivankov was arrested in 1995 and sentenced to nine years
in prison for trying to extort money from two Russian
businessmen. But others have since followed his path
to Miami.
The head of Russia's single largest crime group until his
arrest in Switzerland last year, Sergei Mikhailov, and other
top mobsters met in a luxury Miami Beach hotel in 1993
to divide up Russian properties about to be sold to private
investors, law enforcement officials said.
An FBI affidavit in Kirillov's case file described him as head
of the crime gang in Nishni Novgorod -- a powerhouse
industrial city that manufactures everything from nuclear
submarines to MiG warplanes.
Convicted of fraud in Russia, he is awaiting trial here on
charges that he conspired to buy nine pounds of cocaine
a month from Peruvian dealers in New York, bring the
drugs to Miami and smuggle them to Moscow. ``Totally
unfounded charges,'' said Kirillov's lawyer, Alan E.
Weinstein.
Vyacheslav Sliva, deported from Canada to Russia
last year as a top mobster, and the reputed bosses of
Russian gangs in Los Angeles and Denver have all
been spotted in Miami in recent years, Lamothe said.
And the wife and daughter of Aksyonov, reputed head
of Moscow's powerful Ismailova gang, have bought
several condos here even though he has been denied
a U.S. visa.
The dozen Russian gangs in Miami have been spotted
running health insurance frauds, counterfeit money and
prostitution rings, visa scams and extortion attempts on
Russian emigres.
[ . . . ]
When federal prosecutors in New York charged 25 Russian
emigres in 1995 with pocketing $140 million in fuel sales
taxes due the U.S. government, the main firm involved
turned out to have an office in Miami.
When Ukrainian police arrested two British men who tried
to cash counterfeit bank drafts worth $7 million in January,
the documents carried the name of a nonexistent ``Florida's
Ocean Bank.''
[ . . . ]
Stefan Lemieszewski
"Stefan Lemieszewski" <ste...@direct.ca> wrote in message
news:%xP97.111$FS1....@brie.direct.ca...
> Russian Mafia in Florida - Miami Herald - 5Jul98
>
>
> Feedback from earlier postings expressed bewilderment at
> why a company like Itera was registered in Florida, USA. This
> is the "middleman" company that has the rights to supply
> natural gas to heavily-dependent Ukraine by buying it from
> Gazprom. Recently we learned that the secretive Itera paid
> the current California prison-resident and former prime
> minister Pavlo Lazarenko at least $25,000,000 in 1996.
>
> But the above is just one example of the growing importance
> of Florida to the Russian Mafia. Below are a few more examples,
> including a mini-mafia summit meeting in Miami in 1993 to
> divvy up "government-owned hotels and factories that were
> privatized that year." Such are the decisions made on those
> "economic reform" policies of privatization in eastern Europe.
>
>
>
To better understand how the Russian Mafia is building on the
Meyer Lansky tradition of organized crime in Florida, including
its banking and money laundering networks, please refer to
some historical background on the national crime syndicate
(NCS) in USA run by Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano
provided by Gary Potter (a professor specializing in Criminal
Justice and Police Studies).
One notes the similarity in the long arm of organized crime
reaching the highest political levels in the countries in which
they operate. The Russian Mafia around Kuchma, Yeltsin and
Putin in Ukraine and Russia compared to the NCS (through
Bebe Rebozo) and Richard Nixon in USA.
Rebozo was Nixon's closest, longest and most trusted adviser,
despite keeping a very low profile. Said Nixon in his memoirs:
"Bebe Rebozo is a man of great character and integrity". In the
book, "The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of
Richard Nixon", author Anthony Summers writes:
==
"The friend from Florida was there to support Nixon at all
the milestones on his political trail: in Florida after the 1952
election that made him vice president, after the major
Republican setback in 1958, and at the Ambassador Hotel
Los Angeles in 1960, when news came in that he had lost
to John F. Kennnedy. In 1962, when Nixon ran for the
governorship of California, Rebozo was there to comfort
him in defeat. He traveled around the world with Nixon
during the wilderness years of the mid-sixties and
celebrated with him after he reached the White House in
1968. Nixon wrote his inaugural address while with Rebozo
in Florida, and a rough calculation indicates that Rebozo
was at his side one day in ten for the duration of the
presidency.
The friendship had grown so close that Rebozo effectively
had the run of the White House and his own phone number
there. He flew on Air Force One, donning the coveted flying
jacket bearing the presidential seal, cruised on the
presidential yacht with Nixon and Kissinger, and picked
movies for Nixon to watch at Camp David."
==
Stefan Lemieszewski
==========================================
The Development of Organized Crime
and the Worlds of Meyer Lansky
By Professor Gary Potter
[ . . . . ]
The Move to Florida
Organized crime's move into Florida came at least as
early as the western migration. Al Capone himself was
one of the first to see possibilities in Florida for gambling
and tourism. By the 1930s, mob money was moving into
real estate and into ventures like Tropical Park Race Track
in Coral Gables (a joint new York- Chicago operation), and
especially Lansky's Colonial Inn. The development of Miami
Beach coincided with that of Las Vegas. For instance, in
the 1940s, the Wofford Hotel in Miami was the Florida base
for both Lansky and Costello; and the proprietor, Tatum
Wofford, was friendly with rising stars Richard Nixon and
Bebe Rebozo. Rebozo himself was close to the Cleveland
syndicate. By the 1950s, organized crime had a well
developed role in Miami hotels like the Sands and the
Grand. By the 1980s, some estimates claimed that roughly
half of Miami Beach hotels were connected to mob money
through Lansky or associates like Lansburgh and Yiddy
Bloom (Moldea, 1978: 105-107).
Florida also provided an extremely valuable banking
structure which could be used by organized criminals from
all parts of the country. This was unraveled (at least in part)
by investigations surrounding the Watergate affair of the
1970s. For example, the scandal of Nixon's "Winter White
House" revealed some interesting connections concerning
the "Keyes Realty Company." This company was named in
the Kefauver hearings for its role as intermediary in bribes
between organized crime and Dade County political officials.
In the 1940s, it played a major role in developing Miami
gambling. In 1948 this company transferred a Key Biscayne
property to ANSAN, "a shadowy Cuban investment group" in
which syndicate money was allegedly involved. This linked
the Cuban ancien regime (such as Jose Aleman) with Batista
and Luciano allies. Later, control of this real estate passed to
two new groups: the Teamster's Union Pension Fund and
Lansky's Miami National Bank. In 1967 this land passed to
Nixon and Bebe Rebozo at bargain rates. One of the
Watergate burglars, a Cuban exile, was a vice president of
Keyes Realty.
The Miami National Bank is an interesting case study in itself.
In 1958, it was taken over for the Teamsters, using Lou Poller
as a front. Poller specialized in "laundering" money, and, not
surprisingly, he owed his primary loyalty to Lansky. Organized
crime money now reemerged in the form of real estate,
apartment buildings, hotels, motels, and mobile home
companies. The Teamsters acquired this bank through Arthur
Desser, another link between Hoffa and Lansky, and it was
Desser who made the 1967 Key Biscayne sale to Nixon and
Rebozo (Cook and Carmichael; Scott et al., 1976: 356-358;
Hinckle and Turner, 1981).
By the 1970s, a "subculture of banks in southern Florida" was
linked by "interlocking directorates and major investors" (Freed,
1980: 141). Besides the Miami National, there were the Bank
of Miami Beach, International Bank of Miami, the Key Biscayne
Bank, and Southeast First. Federal prosecutors linked
Southeast First to the intelligence community and especially
to the 1976 murder of Chilean exile Orlando Letelier. These
banks have also been associated with the Lansky and
Luciano mobs and the Cleveland, Boston, and Las Vegas
crime organizations.
[ . . . ]
The Banks
At least by the 1950s, organized crime was learning the
importance of clean money; no longer could gangsters
depend on the loyal silence of bankers as in the
bootlegging days. Lansky learned the techniques of
"laundering" profits, especially through Swiss numbered
accounts. Nig Rosen used such Swiss bank accounts
for his heroin "connection" in the 1950s. Soon, Lansky
and his associates established their own banks. Malnik
established the Bank of World Commerce in Nassau.
Mob money flowed into the Bahamas, before passing
to Tibor Rosenbaum's International Credit Bank in
Swtizerland. Then, it could return to the U.S. for
reinvestment. At every stage in these operations, we
find familiar faces: the Bank of World Commerce has
headed by John Pullman, and investors included Ed
Levinson. In turn, Levinson and Siegelbaum were
active in other Swiss "laundry shops," the Exchange
Bank of Geneva. Finally, we have observed the growth
of the Florida network.
These banks could provide a clean base for further
ventures. For instance, it was Rosenbaum's bank
which supported Cornfeld's IOS. Again, the Overseas
Investors Corporation gave Robert Vesco his
opportunity to plunder a fortune. Both the Vesco and
Rosenbaum ventures collapsed by the 1970s. They
certainly have their successors, although full details
will only become apparent when they in turn reach
their inevitable date with fiscal reality (Raw et. al.,
1971; Fried, 1980: 276-286; Clark and Tighe, 1975;
Hutchinson, 1974; Messick, 1969: 201-209).
===========================================
For more info on Alvin Malnik, see:
http://www.tennessean.com/sii/99/03/14/mob14.shtml
Tennessean
14Mar99
ORGANIZED CRIME
Mob ties cloud political campaign contributions
By Sheila Wissner / Tennessean Staff Writer
[ . . . . ]
=============================================
>
> Miami Herald
> 5Jul98
> Russian Mafia Thrives In South Florida
> By Juan O. Tamayo, Herald Staff Writer
>
> [ . . . . ]