Thread: The Russian Crime Organization That Operated in Trump Tower

The Russian Crime Organization That Operated in Trump Tower

FBI wiretaps, illegal gambling and an Israeli connection, just three floors down from Donald Trump’s penthouse.


Taly Krupkin Mar 22, 2017 10:43 PM
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The FBI did wiretap Trump Tower, but its target was not the future president of the United States and the operation was over well before Donald Trump even declared his candidacy. Instead, the bureau was listening in on a Russian crime organization that worked out of offices on the building's 63rd floor, just three stories below Trump's penthouse. As reported by ABC News on Tuesday, the FBI had the building under surveillance, including electronic monitoring, from 2011 to 2013. The investigation led to the indictment of Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, who is wanted by Interpol and on the lam in Russia, and 33 individuals suspected of working for him.

“He is a major player,” Mike Gaeta, who ran the FBI’s Eurasian organized crime unit in New York and led the 2013 FBI investigation, told ABC News about Tokhtakhounov, who holds both Russian and Israeli citizenship.

“He is prominent. He has extremely good connections in the business world as well as the criminal world, overseas, in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, other countries.


"Because of his status, we have kept tabs on his activities and particularly as his activities truly enter New York City. Their money was ultimately laundered from Russia, Ukraine and other locations through Cyprus banks and shell companies based in Cyprus and then ultimately here to the United States," Gaeta said.

Tokhtakhounov, a “vor v zakone,” the equivalent of a "godfather" in Russian crime organizations, has been a fugitive from American justice since before the wiretap in Trump Tower. In the summer of 2002 Tokhtakhounov , who is also known as “Taiwanchik” ("little Taiwanese in Russias), was arrested in Italy for bribing judges of the figure skating competitions in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics that year. In a press conference after the arrest, James Comey — now the director of the FBI at a time when the bureau is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, who at the time was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, announced Tokhtakhounov's arrest.

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"The complaint alleges that the long arm of Russian organized crime reached across the globe this past February and into Salt Lake City with a pair of fixes for the Winter Olympics," Comey said at the press conference. The accusations were based on recorded conversations that Tokhtakhounov conducted.

Italy refused the U.S. extradition request, and Tokhtakhounov returned to Moscow, where he continues to be a presence in local social scene, boasting of friendships with local athletes and celebrities such as the pop singer Philip Kirkorov, appearing in documentaries and voicing his support for the government of President Vladimir Putin.

In interviews, Tokhtakhounov has expressed sadness over losing the opportunity to travel and live abroad, especially in France and Italy. In the Israeli documentary "Thieves in Law" (2010), Tokhtakhounov recalled his life in Israel in the early 1990s. “I understood that it's hard to live with a Russian passport, 'cause you have to renew the visa all the time. I had a Jewish lover so we went to Israel. We got married, moved to Israel and I got the papers. I lived in Israel for six months. Then I realized it's not for me. My wife dies, we buried her and I moved to Paris,” he said in the movie.

While Tokhtakhounov was hiding in Russia, his associate, according to the court documents, was running a crime operation from Trump Tower. Vadim Trincher, an emigrant from the former Soviet Union who holds American and Israeli citizenship, moved to Trump Tower in 2009.

According to the sealed indictment issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York in 2013 as a result of the surveillance operation, “VADIM TRINCHER, a/k/a 'Dima,' was a participant in the enterprise, the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization, and was a leader of it. In that capacity, TRINCHER participated in and profited from various crimes, which he committed along with other members and associates of the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization.

Among other things, TRINCHER oversaw a high-stakes illegal sports gambling business that catered almost exclusively to oligarchs living in Ukraine and the Russian Federation. … Members and associates of the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization and their co-conspirators employed a sophisticated money laundering scheme to move tens of millions of dollars in proceeds from the gambling operation from the former Soviet Union through shell companies in Cyprus into various investments and other shell companies in the United States.”

The organization laundered millions of dollars, with $10 million paid to Tokhtakhounov himself. Trincher pled guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering, and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Another part of the scheme was operated by the organization's younger generation. According to court documents, Trincher’s son Ilya and Hillel "Helly" Nahmad, a prominent art dealer who lived on the 51st floor of Trump Tower, ran an “illegal international gambling business that catered to multi-millionaires and billionaires”.

Nahmad is the scion of a family of Jewish bankers from Syria. He owns Helly Nahmad Gallery, in Manhattan, which has exhibited works by Picasso, Modigliani and Kandinsky. Nahmad pled guilty to gambling charges and received a one-year prison sentence. Having served his sentence, Nahmad continues to be a prominent figure in the art world and to live in his Trump Tower residence.

In 2013, a few months after the arrests of members of the Russian crime ring that worked out of his eponymous midtown tower, Donald Trump flew to Moscow for the Miss Universe contest. Among the guests spotted on the red carpet was Tokhtakhounov, who has been accused of rigging beauty contests in the past. According to a report in Mother Jones, he was invited as a VIP guest to the show, but journalists couldn’t confirm if the two met at the event. After returning to the United States, Donald Trump boasted to the New York Post, "Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room”.

read more: http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-1.779006

Report: FBI Wiretapped Trump Tower, But The Target Was Not The President

Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings

So the Russians liked to run gambling operations for millionaires and bribe Judges of beauty contests and the Olympics Figure Skating?!! Is that because they were bookies on the contests or didn't think their candidates and athletes would win otherwise?!!

Tokhtakhounov Says Criminal Charges Are Just a Misunderstanding


In Russia, Living the High Life; in America, a Wanted Man

By ANDREW E. KRAMER and JAMES GLANZ
JUNE 1, 2013

Photo
A MISUNDERSTANDING “I am not bad, like you think,” says Alimzhan T. Tokhtakhounov. “I am not the Mafia, I am not a bandit.” He faces charges in the United States, but not in Russia. CreditOksana Yushko for The New York Times

MOSCOW — The waiters hovered as Alimzhan T. Tokhtakhounov worked through a platter of chilled mussels, shrimp and octopus one afternoon last month at the restaurant Palazzo Ducale, one of the finest here. The staff could afford to be attentive: there was no one else to serve.
Despite the hour, toward the end of what is usually a busy lunchtime, the restaurant was empty when Mr. Tokhtakhounov came in to speak with a reporter about recent racketeering charges in the United States.

American law enforcement officials view Mr. Tokhtakhounov as a leading figure in Russian organized crime, a member of a storied order of Russian mobsters who is accused of, among other activities, fixing skating matches at the Salt Lake City Olympics and running a high-stakes, trans-Atlantic gambling and money-laundering ring.

But aside from the eerie void in the restaurant and a guard outside, Mr. Tokhtakhounov’s life here seems open and even somewhat ordinary.

Like other men whom the American authorities have identified as Russian mobsters, he walks the streets freely, albeit with a bodyguard. He has his picture taken smiling alongside the glitterati at concerts, fashion shows and soccer matches. He invests in real estate and has recently taken up fiction writing. He showed his guest one of his novels, “Angel From Couture,” a semiautobiographical story that focuses on the love affair of a young model and an older man.

Whatever else he may be, he insisted over lunch, he is innocent of all charges against him.

“I am not bad, like you think,” he said, spearing an octopus tentacle with his fork and washing it down with sparkling mineral water. “I am not the Mafia, I am not a bandit.”

Federal authorities in the United States have been pursuing Mr. Tokhtakhounov (pronounced toe-TAH-hoon-ov) since 2002, when he was charged with fixing ice dancing and pairs skating competitions at the Salt Lake City Olympics.

In the more recent case, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged him in April with being a leader of a sports betting ring with operations in New York, Los Angeles, Russia and Ukraine. The setup drew in billionaire gamblers and laundered money through accounts around the world, prosecutors say.

Their indictment identifies Mr. Tokhtakhounov as a particular type of Russian criminal known as a “Vor v Zakone,” or “thief in law,” sometimes known as a Vor: a member of an almost priestly order, originally forged from prison hierarchies in the gulags. Vors are said to live by a strict code: They never marry, work or tell lies.

Mr. Tokhtakhounov, who is in his mid-60s, is “one of the last of the older generation of godfathers,” said Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and an authority on Russian criminality. And his is among a handful of names that virtually every Russian gangster recognizes, he said.

Despite that reputation and the American charges, Russian authorities leave Mr. Tokhtakhounov alone. Russia has no extradition treaty with the United States and no outstanding charges against him. His thin criminal history here, an internal passport violation and an infraction for being unemployed, dates from the Soviet era and is no longer on the books.

Russian police officials say they have nothing on Mr. Tokhtakhounov; a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Interior Affairs, which oversees the police, confirmed he is on no wanted list here.

Russia under Vladimir V. Putin has arrived at a sort of détente with organized crime. In the 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia was besieged by mob wars in which gangsters publicly killed their enemies, but such violence has dropped sharply over the past decade.

Mr. Putin, who was president in the early 2000s and is again now, let it be known that such overt displays of gangsterism undermined the authority of the state and would not be tolerated, but he otherwise left the underworld hierarchy intact, Dr. Galeotti said.

Many violent crime figures have evolved into semilegitimate businessmen who carry on their activities through somewhat more acceptable means. Some now operate so openly that they have held gatherings on pleasure boats in the Moscow River in the heart of the city, the police say.

Whatever the benefits of such an arrangement inside Russia, thieves in law remain a menace in émigré communities abroad, said Sergei Kanev, a reporter covering organized crime at the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

“Even in America the thieves have a huge influence on former Soviet immigrants,” he said. “Criminal threads still tie them together. All their relatives are here in Russia. A thief might say, ‘Play along, or your uncle and aunt will get it.’ ”
Photo



WANTED Mr. Tokhtakhounov’s Interpol wanted poster accuses him of “bribery in sport contests,” along with fraud and other malfeasance. Mr. Tokhtakhounov, however, contested the F.B.I.’s characterization of him.

He has been married, though he is now single. The police outside Russia, he said, often mistake his penchant for flashy clothes and high-priced meals for the lifestyle of a mobster.

“Let me explain something,” he said. “A thief in law, if he is a thief, he should not say, ‘I am not a thief.’ He should say, ‘I am a thief.’ And I say, ‘I am not a thief.’ You understand.”

Asked if he had ordered the restaurant cleared out for the interview, he just smiled, shrugged and suggested it was not a busy time.

American authorities say in the recent case that Mr. Tokhtakhounov served as a ringleader along with two others, Vadim Trincher and Anatoly Golubchik, of one of two overlapping illegal gambling operations. One operation, prosecutors say, was led in part by the scion of a New York art dealing family, Hillel Nahmad, which hosted poker games for celebrities and financial titans in New York and Los Angeles.

In the other operation, Mr. Tokhtakhounov is accused of funneling Russian oligarchs’ losses to shell companies in Cyprus, disguised as phony loans. The scheme, prosecutors say, laundered more than $50 million.

All the suspects have pleaded not guilty except Mr. Tokhtakhounov, who has not left Russia for a decade, he said, because of his fugitive status. Lawyers for Mr. Golubchik, Mr. Trincher and Mr. Nahmad said their clients were wrongly charged. The lawyer for Mr. Nahmad, Benjamin Brafman, said his client had never met or spoken to Mr. Tokhtakhounov, and even the indictment does not claim that.

Mr. Tokhtakhounov attributed his latest troubles to American agents’ eavesdropping on his phone calls with Mr. Trincher and Mr. Golubchik when he was placing bets, up to $20,000 on individual soccer games. The bets were his own, he said, not those of gambling clients; the agents misinterpreted his Russian slang.

“I speak openly on the phone,” he said, waving his gold-colored clamshell Samsung. “That is my whole problem.”

“If I’m a dealer, catch me,” he said. “They just catch my words. Ah ha! An organizer. How could I organize gambling in America? It’s impossible. And why would I? This is not my business.”

As he tells it, he is a real estate investor in Moscow, an organizer of Russian pop concerts and fashion shows, and now a writer. “I live peacefully on this business and raise my children,” he said.

Mr. Tokhtakhounov owned casinos in Moscow before gambling was outlawed there in 2009. His novel “Angel From Couture,” published in 2010, is subtitled “A Novel From the Life of High Fashion.” In the 1990s, he represented a Russian modeling association in Paris. The inside cover summarizes the story as “What happens when a young beauty falls for the charms of an older man.” Last year, he fathered twin girls with a woman 40 years younger than he is.

He lives in a prestigious apartment building in central Moscow and owns a palatial country home outside the city.

He is also something of a celebrity, famously friendly with Joseph Kobzon, a crooner known as the Russian Frank Sinatra.

After the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, the F.B.I. said he had directed a scheme to secure a gold medal for the top Russian pairs skaters and for the top ice dancers representing France, one of whom was a Russian. The Russian pairs skaters won the gold, but after questions were raised about the judging, the Olympic committee awarded duplicate gold medals to the second-place Canadian team.

The authorities in Italy, where he then lived, detained him briefly on the charges but released him to Russia rather than extradite him to the United States.

His Interpol wanted poster accuses him of “bribery in sport contests,” fraud and other malfeasance and says he is affiliated with Semyon Y. Mogilevich, a man the American authorities consider a Russian Mafia godfather who is on the F.B.I.’s Ten Most Wanted list. Mr. Mogilevich also lives freely in Russia.

Mr. Tokhtakhounov denied knowing Mr. Mogilevich.

But he glumly recounted friendships with several others reputed to be Mafia leaders, including those known by the nicknames Grandpa Hassan and Yaponchik, or the Little Japanese, who were killed in recent years in two rare occurrences of mob violence. They were shot by snipers while leaving Moscow restaurants after meals.

At the Palazzo Ducale, as Mr. Tokhtakhounov’s own guard waited, he denied, line by line, the allegations against him.

Three waiters continually circled, topping off the water glasses until one wandered too close during conversation and Mr. Tokhtakhounov told him to go away.

“Alimzhan,” the waiter responded, “Don’t worry, you know us: we’re deaf.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/wo...rstanding.html

You know, my respect for the FBI has sunk lower than I could have ever thought possible.

We waste 2 years of FBI resources chasing a group of Russians who like to come to the states and play money poker and bet on sports? Honestly?! HONESTLY?!!! We've got a $300 billion a year foreign illegal drug trade pouring in over the Southern Border and 30 million illegal aliens roaming our land stealing jobs and benefits and killing our citizens, but the FBI is wasting our resources wiretapping Russians betting on soccer games and playing money poker in New York City?!

How did they get a federal warrant for the wiretap on these guys to begin with? There's no federal law against playing poker or betting on sports.

Originally Posted by Judy

. . . How did they get a federal warrant for the wiretap on these guys to begin with? There's no federal law against playing poker or betting on sports.

It is illegal to RUN an illegal sports betting operation and launder illegal money.

"the bureau was listening in on a Russian crime organization that worked out of offices on the building's 63rd floor, just three stories below Trump's penthouse. As reported by ABC News on Tuesday, the FBI had the building under surveillance, including electronic monitoring, from 2011 to 2013. The investigation led to the indictment of Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, who is wanted by Interpol and on the lam in Russia, and 33 individuals suspected of working for him..."

"Among other things, TRINCHER oversaw a high-stakes illegal sports gambling business that catered almost exclusively to oligarchs living in Ukraine and the Russian Federation. … Members and associates of the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organization and their co-conspirators employed a sophisticated money laundering scheme to move tens of millions of dollars in proceeds from the gambling operation from the former Soviet Union through shell companies in Cyprus into various investments and other shell companies in the United States.”

The organization laundered millions of dollars, with $10 million paid to Tokhtakhounov himself. Trincher pled guilty to conspiracy to commit racketeering, and was sentenced to five years in prison."


Russian elite invested nearly $100 million in Trump buildings

According to the article, they ran the gambling operation in Russia and Ukraine. We have no jurisdiction there under their laws. Having poker parties for money at Trump Tower might violate New York State Law, but I'm not aware of any federal law against gambling in New York or elsewhere. Same with sports betting. The same is true with the money laundering linked to it, but the article says the money laundering through Cyprus was from "phony loans". Again, the US has no jurisdiction in Cyprus over what is or is not or could be or might be a "phony loan" any more than we have any jurisdiction over Russian and Ukrainian gambling operations.

I'm just confused as to what federal laws in our country ban gambling and sports betting or what federal laws we have that accuse people of money laundering of foreign money earned in foreign gambling and sports betting operations that that they then loan to themselves or others in other foreign countries and then somehow use that to play money poker in New York City.

Normally, if somehow for some reason we discovered possible wrong-doing or crimes that were occurring in foreign countries, we would notify those countries authorities and let them know they have a potential criminal element violating their laws and if they are hiding out here in the US, agree to requests for any extradition of those authorities wish to pursue the matters.

It's just very odd to me. Maybe this is what the FBI does, playing the role of an international crime-fighting robin hood prosecuting here for possible crimes there, but this is all news to me, because I don't believe we have any jurisdiction for those types of prosecutions and why in the world would we even waste our time and money on such activities and incarcerations with backlogs all over the place in prosecuting people who have broken our laws? Millions of Americans bet on sports in the United States and play money poker. Yes, some of these activities violate the laws in some states.

Maybe there's some law or explanation out there that I'm not aware of. I've just never heard of any federal laws against gambling or sports betting in the US, let alone in Russia or Ukraine.

28 U.S. Code § 3702 - Unlawful sports gambling

• US Code

It shall be unlawful for—(1)a governmental entity to sponsor, operate, advertise, promote, license, or authorize by law or compact, or

(2)a person to sponsor, operate, advertise, or promote, pursuant to the law or compact of a governmental entity,

a lottery, sweepstakes, or other betting, gambling, or wagering scheme based, directly or indirectly (through the use of geographical references or otherwise), on one or more competitive games in which amateur or professional athletes participate, or are intended to participate, or on one or more performances of such athletes in such games.

(Added Pub. L. 102–559, § 2(a), Oct. 28, 1992, 106 Stat. 4228.)

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/3702

18 U.S. Code § 1956 - Laundering of monetary instruments | US Law ...

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1956
to avoid a transaction reporting requirement under State or Federal law, ... the value of the property, funds, or monetary instruments involved in the transaction; or.