Adscam - Part 1 - Mafia - Paul Martin & Joseph Sigalov & Vyacheslav Ivankov & Semion Mogilevich
Stefan Lemieszewski
Re: Adscam - Claude Boulay links Alfonso Gagliano to
Adscam Funds - Paul Martin & Semion Mogilevich - 20Apr2005
[ . . . ]
And here I was hoping that Paul Martin would explain whether he returned
the Russian Mafia funds to the widow of Joseph Sigalov (of the Solntsevo
crime syndicate), who was an associate of Vyacheslav "Yaponchik" Ivankov
who in turn was a vor v zakone and a lieutenant for Semion "Brainy Don"
Mogilevich, who in turn is on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list.
[ http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/alert/mogilevich.htm ]
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Toronto Life
June 1997
Democracy Inc. Money is the heart of an election campaign.
There are rules about who gets it and how they get it.
Funny how often the rules get broken. Last time out,
Toronto - area MPs took money from a Russian mobster
and a foreign charity. Tax credits were used illegally
by all the major parties. Invoices were inflated to attract
rebates from federal coffers. And officials did nothing
about any of it
By Elaine Dewar
[ . . . . ]
Some time later, I read Paul Martin's returns for 1993, and
spotted a donation of $5,000 from one J. Sigalov, right below
a donation of $5,000 from I.N.T. Business Group. Why would
a York Centre - based company make a huge contribution to
Paul Martin's election campaign in Lasalle - Emard? On a
hunch, I called I.N.T. Business Group and asked for Joseph
Sigalov. The same Russian - accented lady handed me to a
deep - voiced Russian man, who said that Sigalov was ill
with a brain tumour. I mentioned the matter of large campaign
contributions. Yes, said the voice, Sigalov had made them.
So Eggleton had taken a large donation from I.N.T. Business
Group, which was run by a Russian immigrant named Joseph
Sigalov, who gave generously to the Lubavitchers and had a
brain tumour. So Natasha also splashed $30,000 on the
Liberal party. So what? What bothered me was that Sigalov
had also given Paul Martin $10,000.
Last July, The Toronto Star carried two fascinating stories
by reporters Dale Brazao, Moira Welsh and Russian mob
expert Stephen Handelman. They recounted how a Russian
organized - crime figure named Ivankov had come to stand trial
in the U.S. for extortion. Ivankov had threatened two Russian
businessmen in Manhattan who'd failed to pay back the money
they owed to a mafiya - connected bank in Russia. The
businessmen went to the FBI. The Star said Ivankov had two
associates in Toronto, named on wiretap affidavits filed by
the FBI. One of them was Joseph, alias Josef, alias Leonid,
Sigalov.
[ . . . ]
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Author Robert I. Friedman had much more detailed information
about Joseph "Mr Tomato" Sigalov and Vyacheslav "Yaponchik"
Ivankov in his book, "Red Mafiya: How The Russian Mob Has
Invaded America."
Red Mafiya includes references to Sigalov hiring Robert Kaplan,
the former Liberal cabinet minister and Solicitor General in
charge of the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service, shaking down the mayor of Kharkiv in Ukraine over
the city-run casino, international heroin smuggling, arms
trafficking, attending Russian Mafia summit meetings, and
extortion. Sigalov died a few years ago, but his accomplice
and Mogilevich's lieutenant Ivankov lives on. After spending
several years in a U.S. prison, he was extradicted to Moscow
to face charges of murder and awaits trial sitting in the same
prison as Russia's most famous billionaire mafia oligarch
Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Below is an excerpt from Red Mafiya.
Stefan Lemieszewski
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Red Mafiya: How The Russian Mob Has
Invaded America
(Little, Brown and Company; 2000;
ISBN 0-316-29474-8; pp.119-139)
By Robert I. Friedman
Chapter 6
INVASION OF AMERICA
Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov's arrival in America on March 8, 1992, was
tantamount to the coming of a great white shark. He was met at JFK airport
by an Armenian vor who handed him a suitcase packed with $1.5 million in
cash. Swiftly setting up offices in Brighton Beach, Ivankov recruited two
"combat brigades" led by an ex-KGB officer and composed of 250 former
athletes and Special Forces veterans of the Afghanistan war. He put the
combat brigades on a $20,000-a-month retainer to kill his enemies, collect
tribute from legitimate businesses worldwide, "arbitrate" disputes among
Russian businessmen, and establish "an international link closely connecting
thieves-in-law to the United States," according to a classified FBI
document. "When Ivankov came into town, I never saw such fear," remarked a
Genovese wiseguy.
Soon after Ivankov appeared in New York, Alex Zilber, still one of the most
powerful forces in Brighton Beach, asked one of his Genovese partners to
arrange a sit-down with him. The mobster offered to have the Italians kill
Ivankov, but Alex pleaded with them not to go to war. "I'll be okay here in
Brighton Beach," he said, "but they'll take me out in Russia [where he had
extensive business interests]. Let's pay him." Ivankov celebrated his new
partnership in Rasputin by hosting a lavish champagne party there.
The Old Guard of Russian Jewish gangsters had little choice but to cooperate
with Ivankov. He was regarded as a prolific moneymaker, and many ranking
members of the Brighton Beach mob were by then aging, quasi-legitimate
businessmen who no longer had the fortitude for an extended gangland war.
And as the Zilber brothers realized and hit man Moyna Elson soon
discovered--resistance was futile. The "Streetsweeper" shooting, which
precipitated Elson's flight, "put the fear of God" into the Old Guard,
commented Elson's lawyer, James DiPietro. "We were amateurs compared to
Ivankov and his men," observed Brighton Beach-based Jewish gangster Vladimir
Ginzberg. "We had a criminal past, but not so rich like them."
Indeed, much of the fear that Ivankov inspired was due to the fact that he
came invested with the full backing of Moscow's most powerful crime lords.
Made affluent and powerful by the fall of communism, their gangs had grown
unprecedently large and fierce, and enjoyed a wealth of resources in the
corrupt former Soviet Union that dwarfed that of even the most significant
Russian mob operations in the United States. Now, as perestroika bloomed,
the Mafiyas based in the former Soviet Union began to reach across suddenly
unrestricted national boundaries, sending their soldiers and bosses like
Ivankov out around the globe to either reconnect with or conquer their
comrades who had emigrated a generation earlier.
In fact, in the post-perestroika years, thousands of Russian thugs were
easily slipping into the country. The understaffed and ill-equipped
Immigration and Naturalization Service seemed helpless to stop them. Ivankov
landed in the United States traveling under his own name, with an official
foreign-travel passport. His visa, good for two weeks, had been obtained
directly from the U.S. embassy in Moscow. He was sponsored by
Manhattan-based shipping magnate Leonard Lev, a fifty-eight-year-old emigre
who had started his career in time-honored fashion as a master pickpocket in
Kiev before becoming a partner in Marat Balagula's gasoline operations and
the Odessa restaurant.
Lev's Park Avenue company controlled a massive fleet of deepwater ships in
Panama, which the government suspected of smuggling everything from coke to
the latest model Ford Bronco, and of obtaining American visas for any number
of mafiosi. "Bullshit," said Lev about the alleged smuggling. "I move
chicken parts." If a ship's captain smuggled contraband, he was completely
unaware of it, he told me.
Lev had created a "film" company called Twelve-LA, and wrote the U.S.
embassy requesting a visa for Ivankov, saying he was a film consultant. Then
Lev helped the recently arrived Ivankov enter into a sham marriage so he
could apply for a green card and, after that, U.S. citizenship. Over drinks
at the Odessa, Lev introduced Ivankov to an aging Russian lounge singer. She
agreed to marry the vor for $15,000, getting her first installment from Lev
in a cigarette box stuffed with $5,000 in crumpled greenbacks. Part of the
deal was to get a quickie divorce in the Dominican Republic after Ivankov
got his Social Security card.
Ivankov's criminal domain in the New World rapidly expanded into gambling,
prostitution, and arms sales, as well as participation in gasoline tax
fraud. In Brighton Beach, he had shrewdly placed reliable members of the
Jewish Organizatsiya's Old Guard like Lev as prime facilitators, using
their knowledge about the American banking and criminal justice systems to
obtain crooked lawyers, government contacts, passports, visas, and green
cards.
"Ivankov brings with him the tradition of hard-core Russian criminals'
dedication to their own authority and their experience in deception and
corruption practiced under Communism," commented a classified FBI report.
"While not abandoning extortion, intimidation and murder, Ivankov also
incorporates more subtle and sophisticated modern methods which enable
cooperation with other groups, the exploitation of weaknesses in legal and
financial procedures, and the use of current Eastern European and Eurasian
political and economic instability to further his empire."
In Miami, Ivankov allegedly took over a hidden share of Porky's, a strip
club where he "was shown great homage" by the club's owner, Ludwig "Tarzan"
Fainberg, a Russian crime lord, said U.S. intelligence sources, and also
entered into a deal to provide heroin and money laundering services to the
Cali cartel in exchange for cocaine, which was earmarked for Russia. In
Denver, he obtained a hidden interest in a sprawling Russian restaurant from
Vatchagan Petrossov, an Armenian vor, who was Ivankov's international drug
adviser, asserts the FBI. Ivankov also bought large parcels of real estate
in the Rocky Mountains. In Houston, he purchased a used car dealership for
money laundering. In New Jersey, he met with Russian bankers about possible
deals in Thailand, Brazil, and Sierra Leone, where he wanted to steal
diamonds. Ivankov was fascinated with the complexities of Western banking,
and listened intently as the bankers explained to him the intricacies of a
financial instrument known as American depository receipts. In Manhattan,
meanwhile, financial wizard Felix Komorov became his chief money launderer,
according to the FBI.*
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* Komorov, who headed a vicious extortion ring, also allegedly ran a complex
advance fee scheme in which five Russian-American "salesmen" were sent to a
trade show in Moscow in 1992, where they sold nonexistent electronic
equipment and foodstuffs to some twenty Russian enterprises. It worked in
this manner: In January 1992, according to a classified FBI report, a number
of Russian and Ukrainian emigres affiliated with a major Eurasian crime
group "established an agreement with a scientific center in Russia for the
use of the facilities and a bank account. They also established a front
company and a respective commercial bank account in New York City. The bank
account was opened with a false New York State driver's license. The address
was a mail drop. Seized documents revealed approximately thirty other bank
accounts associated with the New York front company. False identities of
prominent U.S. citizens were used to open the accounts and establish
short-term credit for the fraud scheme in Russia.
"Five persons acting as representatives of the front company subsequently
perpetrated an advance fee scheme at a business exposition in Moscow," says
the FBI report. "They sought out buyers of computer equipment and consumer
goods, offering low prices. More than 20 Russian enterprises were
victimized, making advance payments of over $6 million to the scientific
center account. The front company then transferred the money to their other
accounts without fulfilling contract obligations. The FBI and MVD [The
Russian Internal Affairs Ministry] have traced $1 million of the illicit
proceeds to New York City."
Of the five "salesmen," one accepted a plea bargain and received a
five-month jail term. Two others cooperated with the government and entered
the Federal Witness Protection Program. Another "salesman" was captured by
the Russian authorities and imprisoned, and a fifth is still waiting to be
sentenced in New York. Komorov was never charged.
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Outside the borders of North America, the cagey vor constantly traversed
Europe, the Middle East, and Eurasia as restlessly as a nomad, keeping close
links to his own formidable organization in Russia, which the Circle of
Brothers allowed him to maintain. "It seems like I go from meeting to
meeting, flying around," he wearily told an associate over a government
wire. In the summer of 1994, Ivankov presided over two Appalachian-style
sit-downs in Tel Aviv with his son Eduard, where dozens of gangsters
gathered at the plush Dan Hotel to discuss their investments in the Jewish
state, according to U.S. and Israeli intelligence sources. During his global
travels he also recruited the most intelligent, ruthless, and boldest young
Russian criminals for his U.S. operations. Wooing them with promises of the
"good life," according to a classified FBI report, he opened bank accounts
for them and provided credit cards and automobiles for their use. Ivankov
himself "seems always able to reenter the United States undetected after
each trip," declared an FBI report.
Ivankov also reinforced old relationships with leaders of various Eurasian
criminal underworld groups, such as the Budapest-based Mogilevich
organization and the Solntsevskaya family, Moscow's mightiest criminal
enterprise, which had more than 1,700 members. Its neighborhood stronghold
in the suburbs of southern Moscow was where the communists released
criminals when they were freed from the Gulag. These hoodlums and their
offspring grew into tough mob leaders who flourished during perestroika when
they seized more than eighty commercial companies, prime real estate,
hotels, and other property. The Solntsevskaya organization is divided into
ten- to twelve-member combat brigades, which are headed by criminal
avoritets. Each unit controls assigned banks and business concerns in Moscow
and the suburbs. At the same time, the group has a shared fund, or an
obshchak, to which all brigades allocate money on a regular basis. When
friction arises, members of several brigades come together to negotiate.
With other crime groups, however, Ivankov battled for territory. He was
particularly determined to dominate the nascent Russian trade in cocaine, a
drug that had quickly soared in popularity among the nation's nouveaux
riches. Two Russian criminals stood in his way. One was the Georgian vor
Valeri "Globus" Glugech, the first gangster to set up large-scale drug
importation to Moscow from suppliers in the United States, a venture that
made him a wealthy man. Ivankov invited Globus to visit the United States in
early 1993 and "offered" to buy out his operation, a proposal Globus
refused. In March 1993, Globus was shot to death by a sniper outside a
discotheque he owned in Moscow. Three days later, his principal lieutenant,
Anatoly Semionov, was gunned down in front of his Moscow apartment. Two
weeks after that, another top aide, Vladislav Wanner, was killed at an
open-air gun range in Moscow. At a May 1994 sit-down in Vienna, the heads of
several Russian organized crime groups officially awarded Ivankov the
remnants of Globus's drug business.
The next Russian drug kingpin to fall was Bison's friend Sergei "Sylvester"
Timofeyev, who directed his mob's activities from Cyprus. Timofeyev and
Ivankov had had a long-standing beef. Ivankov had an illegitimate son,
Viktor Nikiforov, also known as Kalina, who had become a thief-in-law and a
powerful figure in the Moscow underworld while his father was in prison.
Just before Ivankov was released, Kalina was murdered. Most underworld
figures believed Sylvester had ordered the hit, although no one could prove
it.
Typically, however, Russian gangsters do not let their personal animosities
stand in the way of their business, and the two men continued to make deals.
In July 1994, Sylvester and Ivankov completed a drug transaction, after
which Sylvester complained that he had been shortchanged by $300,000. A few
weeks later Sylvester traveled to New York to work out the dispute with
Ivankov. The meeting ended with the two cursing and shouting at each other,
Ivankov accusing Timofeyev of having murdered Kalina, as well as
assassinating his friend Otari Kvantrishvili outside a Moscow bathhouse. One
month after the altercation, Sylvester was blown apart in Moscow by a car
bomb placed in his Mercedes, and he had to be identified by his dental
records.
Ivankov also nurtured his high-level contacts with corrupt Russian
government leaders, as well as with former leaders of Russian intelligence
and military services. He employed high-profile former foreign government
officials as his international "diplomats." One such figure was Tofik
Azimov, the former principal representative of the Republic of Azerbaijan to
the European Economic Community. Azimov was handpicked by Ivankov to
provide a "legitimate" front for Atkom, a "consulting firm" that allegedly
laundered tens of millions of dollars out of a $10,000-a-month office suite
in Vienna. The city is popular with Russian mobsters because of its strict
banking secrecy laws, its three-hour flight time from Moscow, and its
abundance of corrupt state bureaucrats. The money laundering operation was,
in fact, directed by Ivankov's son Eduard, who "conducts a wide array of
financial and banking transactions throughout Central and Western Europe
(including England) in an effort to launder proceeds of Ivankov's illegal
activities," according to the FBI. Atkom employed two female secretaries, a
former member of the Austrian Special Forces who worked as an armed
bodyguard, and a Russian emigrant and an Austrian citizen who did nothing
but process banking transactions and money transfers, according to a
classified Austrian police document. Azimov came in handy when two
Solnlsevskaya crime lords had to leave Russia because of attempts on their
lives; it was he who arranged for the mobsters' visas through Atkom. As
stunned FBI officials later learned, the Russian gangsters were even
welcomed into the country by Viennese police officers with gifts of
semiautomatic Clock pistols "for self-defense."
Within just a year after he arrived in the "New Land," Ivankov had succeeded
in extending his insidious influence from Austria to Denver to the icy
Baltic republics. His organization was visionary, well managed, efficient,
wealthy, merciless, and expanding. He muscled into Russia's oil, aluminum,
and arms businesses. Tens of millions of dollars of illicit proceeds was
laundered through the U.S. banking system. He frequently used front
companies, through cooperation or extortion, to facilitate money laundering
and the sponsorship of "business associates" for visas to enter the United
States. It was said by his associates that he could provide millions of
dollars in credit to finance a deal with a single phone call. His vast
power was "propelled by a network of influential contacts and seemingly
unlimited funds," said a classified FBI report. "Ivankov is a shrewd and
respected leader over a group of ruthless members knowledgeable in business,
financial, legal, and government operations. In addition to extortion, money
laundering, drug trafficking, Ivankov is suspected of not only arranging
numerous murders but bragging about them."
By January 1995, Ivankov and the Russian mob had grown so bold that they
even convened a summit in the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico, at the San
Juan Hotel and Casino. Shortly before the rendezvous, Toronto-based Russian
crime figure Joseph Sigalov was overheard on a Royal Canadian Mounted Police
wiretap boasting that he was going to Puerto Rico "with Yaponchick [Ivankov]
... to discuss who we will kill, fuck!" Known by his gangland friends as Mr.
Tomato because of his oversized head, Sigalov was the publisher of Exodus,
an influential Orthodox Jewish newspaper in Toronto sponsored by the Chabad
movement, which was active in resettling Russian Jewish refugees. Sigalov
also owned a bakery and was a venture capitalist.
Robert Kaplan, Canada's solicitor general in charge of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (the nation's
CIA) from 1980 to 1984, and a member of Parliament for twenty-five years
until he stepped down in 1993, was Sigalov's business adviser for thirteen
months beginning sometime in 1994. Kaplan said that charges that Sigalov was
a mobster were "ridiculous ... and hard to believe. ... It was never an
issue for me while I was working for him ... because there was nothing
reported about it then or said about it. No one in the community said this
is someone to stay away from and no one did say that. He was very active in
the Russian Jewish community in Toronto, which was rapidly growing," adding
that Sigalov helped the emigres join synagogues and rediscover their
religion.
But Sigalov's good deeds and legitimate business affairs were little more
than a cover for international heroin smuggling, arms trafficking, and
extortion. In one incident, Ivankov ordered Sigalov and Vyacheslav Sliva,
the godfather of Russian organized crime in Canada, to have their henchmen
visit the mayor of Kharkov in Ukraine. The thugs not only strong-armed the
mayor into paying protection money to operate the city-run casino, but for
good measure also took over control of Ukraine's state-sponsored lottery,
according to the RCMP.
[ . . . ]
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[ Cont'd in Part 2 ]