23 December 1999
Financial Times (UK)
Russian mafia link to US campaign funds
By Thomas Catán in New York
Russian émigrés living in the US and believed by authorities to have links with organised crime have made campaign contributions to leading US candidates and political parties in what appears to be an effort to win political influence.
Through family members and businesses, Semyon (Sam) Kislin - identified in a 1994 internal report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a member of a Russian crime syndicate - contributed $46,250 to the political campaign of New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, in 1993 and 1997, election records show.
The commodities trader also donated $8,000 to New York senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat, last year, and contributed to several other US political figures. The allegations against him were first publicised by the Center for Public Integrity, the Washington-based non-profit group, earlier this week. Mr Kislin has denied any links with organised crime.
It also emerged that Jacob Bogatin, an associate of Semyon Mogilevich, who is himself alleged by US and UK intelligence authorities to be the head of a Russian crime syndicate, made donations to the National Republican Congressional Committee between 1996 and 1998. Mr Mogilevich has denied the allegations against him.
Election records show Mr Bogatin contributed at least $2,750 to the Republican campaign group - sometimes under the name of his company, YBM Magnex.
The Philadelphia-based magnet manufacturer, which was founded by Mr Bogatin with Mr Mogilevich, was raided and closed down by US authorities in May 1998. YBM Magnex pleaded guilty to securities fraud and was fined $3m in November 1999.
These and other developments have prompted US investigators to start looking closely at Russian assets and investments in the country, particularly in the New York area, according to people close to the investigations.
Though the political contributions traced so far are not large, they will fuel concerns that money from Russian organised crime could be finding its way into the political system.
"When I was in the Department of State, from time to time we would hear of people associated with organised crime reaching out to members of the [Capitol] Hill," said Jonathan Winer, who until recently served as deputy secretary of state. "The administration briefed Hill members on more than one occasion."
Mr Winer noted that those briefed by the State Department came from both main political parties, and on all occasions dropped contact with the figures under suspicion.
In recent years, two Russian businessmen identified by US authorities as having links to Russian organised crime have turned up at Democratic fundraising events, despite being denied entry visas. Both have appeared in photographs with President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore.
Yesterday (December 1999), the office of Senator Schumer said it had performed a background check on Mr Kislin and found nothing on him. "If any of these allegations prove true, we will absolutely return the money," a spokesman said.
Mr Giuliani's office could not be reached for comment.
43 posted on
12/21/2005 12:03:15 AM EST by
Liz Illegal Immigration, Human Trafficking, and Organized Crime (excerpt)
It is useful to make a distinction between two key activities of organized crime groups; trafficking of illegal goods and the provision of protection and enforcement services, usually to other criminal businesses. The Russian case shows how the agencies (the ‘mafiya’) selling the use of force for protection tend to form the core group of the criminal world. On the other hand, the position of organized crime involved in, say, marketing contraband has a more ambiguous position. The centrality of mafia-type organizations in Russia hinges on the fact that their activities compete directly with a key function of the state, the monopoly of force (Varese 2001: 4-6; Volkov 2002: 21-23).
However, even in the Russian case, one should not exaggerate the domestic protection function as the mafia is also extensively involved in transnational activities. In fact, organized crime has, in recent years, become more diverse in scope, more pervasive in its actions, and much more transnational in its reach. In sum, the ‘transnational criminal today tends to be active in several countries, going where the opportunities are high and the risks are low’ (Williams 2001: 58-60). Not unlike terrorism, the transnational organized crime makes efforts to benefit from the weak legal and bureaucratic capacity and flawed politics of weak or failed states (Williams 2002: 169-74).
(snip)
Within Europe, most of the women working as prostitutes come from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. The number of sex migrants in Europe is impossible to determine, but 100,000 is sometimes given as a conservative estimate.
A higher estimate is reached if one believes that 50,000 Russian women are lured every year to the sex business abroad. On that basis, one may even suggest that the number of foreign sex workers in the EU varies between 200,000 and half a million. Ukraine seems to be a major source of sex migrants as 20 per cent of the trafficked migrants from there are women, while the corresponding figure for Lithuania is 7 per cent and Poland 9 per cent (Weir 2001; Salt and Hogarth 2000: 71-73; Global Report 1999: 225-27). The higher level of living and the Roman Catholic culture in Lithuania and Poland may explain the difference.
The estimation of the number of women trafficked for the sex industry is made even more difficult by the fact that women may come to a country for brief stints by a legal visa, go back home for a while, and return again. Those staying in prostitution business for longer periods of time may have originally entered the country legally to work, nominally at least, as maids, entertainers, waitresses, or secretaries (on problems to estimate trafficked migrants, see Salt and Hogarth 2000: 29-43).
(snip)