https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/a-made-in-miami-money-laundering-saga-develops-even-deeper-ukraine-roots/ar-BB1fySDX?ocid=msedgntp
WASHINGTON — Take a couple of Ukrainian oligarchs sanctioned for alleged money laundering. Add a mix of Florida-based businessmen who employed the husband of a prominent Democratic politician. Throw in some political connections tracing back to Rudy Giuliani, former Ukrainian presidents and even the Kremlin.
What you get is a tangled story about money and power, one that demonstrates the magnetic pull of Miami when money laundering is alleged.
A lawsuit, Oleg Zhukovskiy v. National Bank of Ukraine, adds an extra layer onto an already complicated saga about alleged dirty money flowing through South Florida.
But first, a recap.
Last year, the FBI raided the properties of a scandal-plagued Ukrainian oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, and his Miami-based associates, Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber, in connection with a money laundering investigation. Nobody was charged but the Justice Department filed forfeiture requests for properties in Texas, Kentucky and Ohio, which were owned or controlled by the three.
Kolomoisky had been in the news in Florida as far back as 2018: Robert Powell, the husband of Miami Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, had, for a decade, served as general counsel to firms owned or controlled at least in part by Kolomoisky before leaving in 2017. Her husband’s link to the firms became a political headache for Mucarsel-Powell, who served a stint in the U.S. House before losing a close race this past November.
In a 2019 statement issued well before the raid, Powell said he has never “worked for, represented, answered to, or received any payment from Mr. Kolomoisky.” Politifact found “no indication” he was involved.
Some of the Kolomoisky-linked firms — Optima Acquisitions, Felman Trading and Felman Productions and the Miami-based Georgian-American Alloys — are at the center of the FBI’s money laundering charges, a forfeiture request by the Department of Justice states.
The State Department sanctioned the oligarch, a one-time provincial governor in Ukraine, and designated his wife and two children as ineligible for entry into the United States this past March 5. Kolomoisky has been accused of siphoning off billions from PrivatBank, a Ukrainian bank.
Kolomoisky had a tangential role in the scandal that led to Donald Trump being impeached for the first time in 2019.
The new civil lawsuit filed in the Southern District court of Florida in January alleges that Serhiy Kurchenko, a second Ukrainian oligarch, illegally acquired Brokbusiness Bank, another Ukrainian financial institution, siphoned off its clients’ money and laundered it through Kolomoisky’s Miami network.
https://news.yahoo.com/latina-ex-rep-debbie-mucarsel-150200224.html
MIAMI — Seeing her father’s body with gunshot wounds was one of the most traumatic moments for former Florida congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell as she grappled with the shock and grief of losing him to gun violence in 1996.