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Igor Kolomoisky in the United States left behind people out of work, as well as huge debts. That’s what journalists say. Photo: YES Press Service
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) spoke about the devastating consequences of doing business in the United States by the Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. Furthermore, journalists discovered that Deutsche Bank was involved in Kolomoisky’s plan to withdraw money from Ukraine.
The research is published on the ICIJ website.
At the beginning of the article, reporters mention a furnace explosion at the Warren Steel plant in Ohio in 2011, as a result of which the facility was severely damaged and two workers were in the hospital with burns.
In the aftermath of the incident, federal inspectors discovered serious safety violations at the plant and workers berated the working conditions, complaining that management ignored their comments.
That explosion was one of the first disasters for Kolomoisky’s American business, “known for his despotic manners and the scale of his corruption scams.”
For more than ten years, Kolomoisky extracted billions of dollars from PrivatBank, of which he was a co-owner, and, using a daring scheme, laundered money through a network of companies around the world.
A journalistic investigation revealed that global lender Deutsche Bank played a key role in the laundering, transferring more than $ 750 million to Kolomoisky’s business in the United States.
Criminals and others trying to hide illegal money in the United States often invest it in gleaming skyscrapers in New York or use it to buy multi-million dollar toys like yachts and expensive jewelry. Kolomoisky was more interested in real estate in the heart of America. For more than a decade, he built a real estate empire by buying at least 22 properties, including a skyscraper in Cleveland, a Motorola building in northern Illinois, and the former Mary Kay Cosmetics headquarters in Dallas.
As the ICIJ discovered, Kolomoisky left a trail of empty bricked-up buildings, unpaid property taxes, dangerous working conditions, unemployed people, and at least four steel mills that went bankrupt.
Laws require banks to prevent money laundering, especially when funds pass through high-risk jurisdictions like Ukraine and the Caribbean. However, ICIJ discovered that over six years, Deutsche Bank secretly and under the control of Kolomoisky and his business partner Gennady Bogolyubov transferred at least $ 490 million from companies registered in the British Virgin Islands to a company in Delaware, one of the largest financial havens in the world. … Most of this money was spent buying real estate in the Midwest.
Another $ 268 million passed through Deutsche to other companies controlled by these people and their partners in the United States. Transfers took place from 2007 to 2013. They stopped only when Kolomoisky and his partners stopped their purchases.
The ICIJ investigation is based on hundreds of confidential PrivatBank documents, including an audit of its troubled finances, showing for the first time how money was secretly moving around the world. It also leaked more than 2,100 suspicious activity reports submitted by the ICIJ, along with court transcripts and dozens of interviews.
Deutsche Bank has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines over the past three years for violating anti-money laundering laws in the United States. The bank declined to respond to ICIJ’s written questions about the transactions involving Kolomoisky and his companies, saying it was legally forbidden to speak about clients or any transfers he may have made. The bank said it recognized “past weaknesses” and “learned from its mistakes.”
Previously, “Strana” wrote about the threat to Kolomoisky from the investigation of his activities in the US.
