the timing of these raids and the Beirut port explosion…was that coincidental?
The FBI raided real estate offices associated with two prominent Jewish philanthropists Tuesday morning, likely in connection to a money-laundering scheme out of Ukraine that was the subject of a Forward investigation earlier this year.
The FBI searched the Cleveland and Miami offices of Optima Management Group, said Special Agent Vicki Anderson-Gregg at the FBI’s office in Cleveland. Optima is a conglomerate of companies operated in part by Chabad donors Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber, who were named in a 2019 lawsuit that accused them of helping oligarchs launder money from a Ukrainian bank.
Korf and Laber owned and managed shell entities in the United States and bought other businesses using laundered money, the lawsuit says.