Posted on 12/20/2005 6:49:46 AM PST by Liz
The former Bronx Boys & Girls Club at the center of a scandal over $875,000 funneled to the liberal radio network Air America is fighting eviction............
.........known as the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club until its charter was revoked by the youth organization's national headquarters, was ordered to turn in the keys............
Gloria Wise lost $9.7 million in city contracts...... because of an investigation of its finances.
"There was a time when they provided services for senior citizens, the frail and for youth," said Herbert Freedman, chief officer of Co-op City's management firm, Riverbay Corp. "Now it looks like it's for profit, since they charge $400 to $500 a month for day-care services. That's not why they were given the space."
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Seems to be one scheme replicated many times.
Err America - financed by the mob - broadcasting to a mob. A match made in 'heaven'. (Betcha never hear THAT word discussed on their worthless network...)
Nice job on the research Liz. Lately, certain stories are getting back page coverage while complete garbage gets the headlines.
Here's another tidbit of interest.
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.
You did an earlier post about Russian criminals permeating the sex industry.
They bring over Russian women with promises of legit work, then enslave them here, by forcing them into sex trades----stripping--prostitution, etc.
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)
One thing I find really interesting about this topic is that the rise of the Russian mob in New York followed the decline of the Gambinos after the Gotti bust, which also shifted the balance of power to the Genoveses. I have wondered if these things are related, either by opportunism or by design, and how this shift in power relates to the political balance of power in New York politics.
Genoveses 'top of five Mafia families'
The FBI considers the Genoveses to be the biggest and most powerful of New York's five Mafia gangs. The four other families have seen their leaderships undermined by a relentless campaign against organised crime in the United States over the past 20 years, detectives say. That has led to a new underworld order. The Genoveses - once seen as the second most powerful family after the Gambinos - have now moved up to the number one slot, the FBI believes. The Gambinos were crippled by the arrests of their boss John Gotti and other leading figures.
Hearing on the Administration's "National Money Laundering Strategy for 2001"
Prepared Mr. Stuart Eizenstat, Partner, Covington and Burling
10:00 a.m., Wednesday, September 26, 2001 - Dirksen 538
The unhappy experience of the Bank of New York highlights the vulnerability of our financial institutions. The Bank was involved in an alleged money laundering scheme in which more than $7 billion was transmitted from Russia into the Bank through various offshore secrecy jurisdictions. At least one relatively senior official of the Bank was suborned, and she suborned others.
We do not know to this day how much of the money came from the accounts of the Russian "Mafiya," how much represented assets stolen in the course of the privatization of state industries — undermining the hopes of Russian reformers — and how much was money hidden to escape legitimate taxation, destroying the fiscal projections on which the reformers depended to lower taxes for ordinary citizens.
We do know that the money came out of Russia through accounts in shell banks chartered in places such as the South Pacific island of Nauru.
The Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Central Bank has estimated that, in 1998 alone, $70 billion was transferred from Russian banks to accounts in banks chartered in Nauru; not all of that money went to Bank of New York, of course, but none of it was ever intended to stay in Nauru.
Mmmmmmm....interesting theory.
It appears the Russian crooks have little or no compunction about using our sacrosanct political system to further their underhanded goals. They keep the pols in obeisance with plenty of dirty money. This creep Kislin boldly held fund-raisers for politicans.
Also these Russian types come from a culture where the government is totally corrupt.
Should also remember, these are not the well-to-do Russians of a generation ago who fled carrying small items---jewelry and Faberge eggs---to sell for their sustenance.
After the recent disintegration of the USSR, the current crop of Russians plundered the Russian government of assets it held under Communism.
The Gottis and Genoveses and all their rackets do not have access to the kind of ready money in huge amounts.
And I don't recall John Gotti being on a campaign donor's list.
Thanks.
I don't know how much is truth vs. legended; but I remember the conversations always going to drugs when the Genoveses family was brought up vs. the Gambinos.
I was much younger when my Great Uncles were alive; but I know I first heard about drugs in reference to the discusions when the Genovese family was discussed.
Wow. What a poorly written post that was. I think I should be off to bed at this point :P
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
Libs on can spend other people's money.
Libs spend other people's money........using criminal scams, schemes, and con games.
2 Corinthians 9:7
Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
2 Corinthians 9:6-8
The left points the finger at everyone else no giving but never learn the roots of giving. You don't force people with a government or a gun. You wait until their heart tells them. The left wants a gun of the IRS at your head.
"Belief" in big government----their pseudo religion.
Not as much money as the Russian oil companies behind the Russian Mafiya, probably. But they've served as muscle for US, Latin American, and European corporations (in addition to working with Asian o.c. groups tied to corporations in Japan, China, and SE Asia), and their money-laundering fronts (i.e. casinos and offshore banks) are sometimes used by people with more money, as with Castle Bank and BCCI. Their links to the unions also enable them to funnel big campaign contributions for others. I'll see if I can dig up some references to lay out my line of thought on this--probably on another thread, and another time, as this will take some digging. Just tossing out the idea for the moment.
Yes. Vito Genovese was into that. Some Genovese family members remained involved in that after he got busted, though it was more discreet due to a policy change. When the heat started turning up on the US Mafia, the Sicilians started handling distribution for them, making the US families' involvement in the background less obvious. Similarly they have sometimes used non-Mafia groups as supply sources or distribution fronts.
Sad to see but when you sleep with dogs (in this case rats) like Air America, you get fleas.
Review this thread, not just the article post.
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