WASHINGTON A prominent commodities trader who acknowledges a business history with a reputed Soviet Bloc crime figure and a notorious arms dealer has been one of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's top campaign supporters.
Commodities trader Semyon (Sam) Kislin and his family also lavished thousands of dollars in contributions to Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, to the Clinton-Gore re-election campaign, to former Republican Sen. Alfonse D'Amato and to a number of state and city politicians. Kislin sits on the New York City Economic Development Board.
Kislin is not alone among emigres from the former Soviet Union who have successfully established themselves in the United States while law enforcement agencies, particularly the FBI, track their alleged associations with organized crime. The Center for Public Integrity has obtained confidential law enforcement documents detailing the activities of dozens of the emigres, but authorities rarely make cases and still less share the intelligence outside their departments.
A 1996 Interpol report claims that Kislin's firm, Trans Commodities, Inc., was used by two reputed mobsters from Uzbekistan, Lev and Mikhail Chernoy, for fraud and embezzlement. And a confidential 1994 FBI intelligence report on the Brooklyn, N.Y., mob organization headed by Vyacheslav Ivankov, the imprisoned godfather of Russian organized crime in the United States, lists Kislin as a "member/associate" of Ivankov's gang. It claims that his company co-sponsored a Russian crime boss and contract killer for a US visa and asserts that he was a "close associate" of the late notorious arms smuggler Babeck Seroush, who later settled in Russia.
In a telephone interview on Dec. 17, Kislin confirmed he had employed Mikhail Chernoy at Trans Commodities, but said he didn't know Ivankov. "I never met this guy; I never saw him in my life," he said. He said that someone had forged his signature to obtain the hit man's visa. And, he confirmed, "I used to do business with Babeck Seroush."
Smuggling Semiconductors
Seroush was indicted in 1984 by Giuiliani, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, on charges of conspiring to smuggle semiconductors and night-vision goggles to North Korea. But West Germany, where he was living, declined to extradite him to the United States. A federal law enforcement official who has investigated Seroush said that he was an Iranian-born communist who had immigrated to the Soviet Union in the 1970s and specialized in smuggling military high-tech equipment for the Red Army. Kislin said he met Seroush, who he said also trafficked in narcotics in Russia, through the arms dealer's former wife, who was a personal friend. "I used to go to their house on the West Side in New York City," he said.
He said one deal with Seroush involved the shipment of 40 low-powered computers to Russia via Germany in the late 1970s, when even those had to be licensed by the State Department. He said he obtained the license and arranged for their shipment to Germany. He said that during transit the computers were illegally replaced by more powerful ones not covered under the license. "They were caught in Germany and they were put in jail. But they never called me, they never asked how I did business with him."
Reports by the FBI and Interpol, the international law enforcement intelligence-sharing agency, claim that Trans Commodities, Inc., had laundered millions of dollars and was used for fraudulent banking documents by the Chernoys in the early 1990s as the brothers engineered the takeover of much of Russia's metals industry, notably aluminum, through alleged embezzlement, money laundering and murder.
Kislin said he had been thoroughly investigated by the FBI and has never been charged with a crime. He acknowledged that Trans Commodities employed Mikhail Chernoy as the company's manager between 1988 and 1992, but said he knew Lev Chernoy only in passing. "Mikhail Chernoy is the best man I ever knew," he said.
The FBI report claims that in the early 1990s, Mikhail Chernoy was "doing business as Transcommodities (sic), a New York based trading company which is known to have laundered millions of dollars from Russia to New York." The 1996 Interpol report, citing Russian police, says that the Chernoy brothers were "also involved in business—ferrous metals—with the American company Trans Commodities Inc. The Tchernyis (sic) were suspected of letter of credit fraud in conjunction with this company as well as incorporation of fictitious companies and fictitious contracts and embezzlement of funds." --SNIP--
They’ve busted a bunch of big mobsters lately, including the alleged Georgian mafia boss last month in Dubai.
ABC website, Madrid, in Spanish 8 Jul 2008/BBC Monitoring/(c) BBC
Madrid: Four of the Russian mafia “capos” in custody in Spain and who are at the head of their criminal organizations form part of a higher structure to which only the leaders of the most important groups have access. This, at least, is what sources consulted by ABC think, who believe that although it cannot be said that there is a leadership in the style of the Cosa Nostra, with a big boss at the head as Toto Riina [Sicilian mafia lord] might once have been, there certainly could be “a top executive where strategic decisions affecting everyone are taken”.
To be precise, according to the aforementioned sources, of those held in Spain, Zakhar Kalashov, arrested in Dubai in Operation Avispa [Wasp] and leader of the Georgian mafia; Gennadiy Petrov, chief of the Tambovskaya; Aleksandr Malyshev, who is in charge of the Malyshevskaya, and a recent arrival to this hierarchy, Vitaliy Izgilov, arrested in both Operation Troika and Operation Avispa, would form part of that higher structure.
“It is not clear who is the most important of them all”, says the sources, “because that assessment greatly depends on who makes it. There are Russian experts who say that the number one is Kalashov, whose arrest made an enormous impact in many police forces around the world; other investigators, on the other hand, maintain that Petrov is above him, above all because of his privileged relations with the political power of his country, or even Malyshev. What they all agree on is that these four individuals are among that group of chosen ones, formed by eight or 10 characters at the most. The order or hierarchy is the least of it”.