The House Oversight Committee released the following text exchange as part of its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. It captures a conversation between Steve Bannon and Epstein after Bannon’s appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee during its probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The messages span two days, November 19 and November 21.
The long, strange fall of Jacob Bogatin, a onetime partner of the “Brainy Don” Semion Mogilevich, now accused of murder in Virginia.
Once upon a time, Semion Mogilevich was one of the biggest gangsters in the world. The “Brainy Don” had his fingers in virtually every criminal activity imaginable, including murder, extortion, sex trafficking, weapons trafficking, money laundering, and even a stock fraud occurring right under the FBI’s nose.
In 2003, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging Mogilevich in a $150 million stock fraud scheme involving YBM Magnex, a purported manufacturer of bicycles and magnets based outside Philadelphia. Also indicted was the company’s CEO, Jacob Bogatin.
Semion Mogilevich, FBI photo
The case drew attention from those of us investigating Donald Trump’s Russia ties because Jacob’s brother, David Bogatin, had bought five apartments in the newly opened Trump Tower in 1984 for $5.8 million. The money came from a gasoline-tax scam he was running in Brooklyn with the Colombo crime family. According to one of Bogatin’s partners in that scheme, Trump himself persuaded Bogatin to purchase the apartments “as an investment.”
Trump didn’t merely broker the sale. As investigative reporter Wayne Barrett reported in Trump: The Deals and the Downfall, Trump personally attended the closing—an unusual move for a developer, and one that suggested this was no ordinary real-estate transaction.
The Bogatin deal carried classic money-laundering red flags. Of the five condos, only one was in David Bogatin’s name; the other four were held by shell companies created the same day by attorney Marvin E. Kramer, who specialized in forming shelf corporations from his Coney Island office. “We didn’t think he was living in five apartments,” former New York assistant attorney general Ronda Lustman told me. Prosecutors quickly concluded that the purchases were intended to launder cash and conceal assets.
Bogatin wasn’t alone. From its earliest days, Trump Tower attracted Russian organized crime figures. Roughly a third of its units were owned by foreign corporations, many of which were registered in Panama or the Netherlands Antilles. It was one of only two buildings in New York that allowed anonymous buyers. “Trump Tower allowed people who wanted to hide their money to buy there because their names were never really published,” said Jim E. Moody, former deputy assistant director of the FBI.
Among its early residents was Vyacheslav Ivankov, one of Russia’s most feared vory v zakone—“thieves-in-law.” The FBI tracked him to a Trump Tower apartment while he directed Russian Mafia operations in the United States. Years later, another mobster, Vadim Trincher, ran a multimillion-dollar gambling ring from a Trump Tower apartment just floors below Trump’s own penthouse.
Another figure often mentioned in connection with Mogilevich is Felix Sater, a Russian-born stockbroker-turned-government-informant and real estate developer who became one of Donald Trump’s more controversial business partners, scouting property deals in Moscow. While some have speculated about ties between Sater and Mogilevich’s network, any link appears to run through Sater’s father, Michael Sheferofsky. In Putin’s People, journalist Catherine Belton reported that two former Mogilevich associates said Sheferofsky had “become an ‘enforcer’ for some of Mogilevich’s interests” in Brighton Beach, where he ran protection rackets with the Genovese crime family.
Whether Trump knew about the Bogatins’ mob ties in 1984 remains unclear. The FBI never questioned him about David Bogatin. “In retrospect, we should have been looking in that direction,” said Ronald Noel, a former FBI agent on the case. What’s certain is that Trump was eager to make the sale, so eager he showed up in person at the closing.
David Bogatin fled the country, settling first in Austria and later in Poland, where he launched one of the country’s first private banking chains. When a Warsaw newspaper exposed his past in 1992, he was arrested and extradited to New York, where he served eight years in Attica.
His brother was more fortunate. The YBM case never reached trial. Mogilevich remains a fugitive despite years on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and a $5 million reward for his capture. Jacob Bogatin remained free on bail ever since.
Until this week.
Jacob Bogatin, booking photo
On October 28, Jacob Bogatin, now 78, was arrested and charged with murder and arson for a blaze that killed a 36-year-old woman and destroyed three townhomes in Sterling, Virginia.
According to the Loudoun Times-Mirror, Bogatin lived in the complex with his girlfriend, Valeria Gunkova, the listed owner, in a unit under foreclosure. One day after the October 24 fire, Bogatin filed an insurance claim for more than twice what was owed on the property.
Investigators say surveillance footage showed a man resembling Bogatin walking away from the scene moments after the fire began. A search of his car turned up a bottle of lighter fluid and a grill lighter.
Bogatin had been free on a $1 million bond since 2003 in the YBM Magnex case. His home-monitoring restrictions were lifted a year later, and he was permitted to travel abroad on the condition that he not commit any crime.
After the Loudoun County fire, pretrial-services officer Keri Foster asked the court to revoke Bogatin’s bail. In her report, Foster noted that Bogatin had dutifully called in to report his home had burned down—without mentioning that he might have been the one who struck the match.
Large crowds gathered in Moscow Friday as Russian opposition leader Alexei Navaly was laid to rest.
Navalny’s aides claimed that he was on the verge of being freed in a prisoner exchange with the West when he died Feb. 16 in an Arctic penal colony. Early-stage discussions had begun to swap Navalny, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, and ex-Marine Paul Whelan for Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted of killing a former Chechen separatist fighter in Berlin in 2019, according to The New York Times.
Meanwhile, President Biden still hasn’t delivered on his promise of “devastating” consequences if Navalny died.
To mark the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and punish Russia for Navalny’s death, the Biden administration unveiled a sweeping package of sanctions on more than 500 people and companies, including some officials linked to the prison where Navalny died. But behind the scenes, administration officials were quietly downplaying the potential impact of the new measures, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The most effective punishment would be direct U.S. military aid to Ukraine, but a measure approving $60 billion in funding remains hopelessly tied up in the House of Represtatives.
That’s not to say the White House doesn’t have options.
Another devastating blow would be using some or all of the $300 billion in Russian assets frozen by the United States after the invasion to help Ukraine. On Tuesday, White House spokesman John Kirby said the administration was “exploring the option,” but cautioned that U.S. allies need to be on board. Public bickering at this week’s G20 meeting showed they aren’t behind it.
The administration has also held off on another powerful measure—a full embargo on the sale of Russian oil. The administration instead imposed an oil price cap that is increasingly unenforceable and allows billions of dollars to fund Moscow’s war machine. A full embargo on Russian oil would almost certainly unleash economic turbulence that the White House would rather avoid in an election year.
Finally, the United States could add Russia to the official list of state sponsors of terrorism along with Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria. Such a declaration would open the U.S. courts to lawsuits by victims of Russian aggression and allow them to claim damages from frozen Russian assets. There’s no doubt some reason why White House hasn’t pulled the trigger, but we don’t know what it is. Kirby has ducked questions on this subject in recent days.
To be sure, all of these options carry risk. But slapping Putin’s wrist with more ineffective sanctions only emboldens him.
The White House could use a good dose of Navalny’s courage.
Trump with Tamir Sapir (center) and Sapir’s son, Alex.
It will never cease to amaze me that America elected a president with so many links to Russian organized crime.
There was Vyacheslav Ivankov whose FBI file contained numerous references to Donald Trump that the bureau refused to release to me. There was David Bogatin who spent $6 million to buy five separate units in Trump Tower. There was Anatoly Golubchik and Vadim Trincher, who went to prison for running an illegal sports betting ring in Trump Tower that catered primarily to Russian oligarchs.
Add another name to the list: The FBI’s file on Tamir Sapir, a Georgian developer who financed the construction of Trump Soho in Manhattan in 2008, shows he was under investigation for links to Russian organized crime.
A memo in the FBI file states that C-24, the FBI’s Russian Organized Crime squad in New York, was investigating Sapir for money laundering and extortion:
“NYO squad C-24 is currently involved in a money laundering and extortion investigation of TAMIR SAPIR, a naturalized Armenian citizen who immigrated from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia through Israel. SAPIR has residences in New York City, Long Island, and Mexico and he frequently travels to Moscow and other Eastern European countries.”
“SAPIR has approximately 12 companies incorporated in New York including ZAR REALTY which owns commercial and residential buildings in New York City. [Note: One of those residences was a condo on the 58th floor of Trump Tower.]”
“Additionally, SAPIR is believed to own a 150-foot pleasure yacht, the MYSTERE, registered in the Cayman Islands and three private jets, one being a Boeing 727 also registered in the Cayman Islands.”
“It is believed that SAPIR is a front for Russian organized crime money including activity for the President of Tartarstan.
Another FBI notes that Sapir allegedly paid a $5 million bribe to an employee of the New York Transit Authority to get employees to move into a building he owned.
The file lists numerous FBI investigations involving Sapir, some dating back to 1977.
Another FBI investigation involved Joy-Lud, a Manhattan electronics store that Sapir ran with Sam Kislin, a Ukrainian immigrant who was a major donor to Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral campaigns.
Joy-Lud catered to a Soviet clientele—with one notable exception. Donald Trump purchased 200 televisions on credit from Sapir and Kislin’s electronics store in the 1970s for his newly acquired Commodore Hotel.
I’ve asked the FBI to process these other files and will post them here when I receive them.
In The Godfather, Part II, mobster Hyman Roth is asked by reporters why he moving to Israel.
“I’m a retired investor living on a pension, and I wished to live there as a Jew in the twilight of my life,” Roth explains.
Sergey Kopytov
Sergey Kopytov is a retired Ukrainian politician living out the twilight of his life in eastern Europe. Like the fictional Hyman Roth, Kopytov invests in hotels. Except Kopytov’s hotels are not located in Cuba, but rather in the Crimean Peninsula, where he served briefly as finance minister in the pro-Russia Ukraine Party of Regions.
The Hyman Roth of the Godfather Part II was looking for a man who wants to be president of the United States. Roth had the cash to help elect him. “We’re bigger than U.S. Steel,” Roth says.
The very real Sergey Kopytov may been looking for a man who wanted to be the UK Prime Minister. And like Roth, Kopytov had the cash to help make it happen.
A $630,225 donation to the UK’s Conservative Party in February 2018—money helped install Boris Johnson in the prime minister’s office at 10 Downing Street—came from Kopytov, according to a bank alert sent to the National Crime Agency.
The bank alert, which tracked the flow of funds from Russia to Britain, was first obtained by The New York Times. It also was detailed in the latest issue of the UK magazine, Private Eye.
“We were able to trace a clear line back from this donation to its ultimate source,” an official at Barclays Bank wrote on January 2021. That “ultimate source” was Sergei Nikolaevich Kopytov.
If true, this raises troubling questions about Russian influence in UK elections. As in the United States, UK political parties are barred from accepting contributions from foreigners. The Conservative Party donation, however, was given a sheen of respectability. It was made in the name of Kopytov’s son-in-law, Ehud Sheleg. The Israeli-born Sheleg is a UK citizen and owner of a posh London art gallery, and a former treasurer of the Conservative party.
“I believe that the flow of funds which began with a $2.5 million payment from Kopytov to his daughter Liliya, and which ended with the $630k donation to the Conservative party was designed to conceal its origins from an impermissible donor and therefore the people responsible for designing the flow of funds committed an offense which potentially qualifies as a criminal offense,” the Barclays banker wrote in the alert. Sheleg’s wife, the former Liliya Kopytova, is a former Miss Ukraine 30 years his junior.
Ehud Sheleg
“Kopytov can be stated with considerable certainty to have been the true source of the donation,” the alert states. It adds: “Kopytov is a Russian resident and there is no indication that he has a UK passport or is on the UK electoral roll.”
It’s part of a pattern of Russian money and influence flowing into the UK Conservative Party. Boris Johnson played tennis in 2014 with Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of a Russian former minister, in exchange for a £160,000 donation. Chernukhin donated almost £2 million to the Conservatives.
Even as the Kremlin meddled in UK elections and sent assassins to kill two former Russian spies living in England, Boris Johnson defended his decision to take questionable money connected to Russia. “It’s very important that we do not allow a miasma of suspicion about all Russians in London—and indeed all rich Russians in London—to be created,” Johnson told the BBC. The future prime minister made those remarks in March 2018, one month after Sheleg’s donation to Johnson’s party and mere days after the poisoning of retired military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal.
A lawyer for the Shelegs told The New York Times that the couple received millions from Kopytov in the weeks before the 2018 donation. But that was “entirely separate” from the campaign contribution. The explanation given was that Kopytov’s money, which derived from a property sale, repaid a loan made to Sheleg by his family’s trust.
Liliya Kopytova
In May 2018, Ehud Sheleg gave another £750,000 donation to the Conservative party. (That donation was not covered in the bank alert.) He was named co-treasurer of the party three months later, and took over sole responsibility for the job the following year. Sheleg stepped down as the Conservative treasurer in 2021, a few months after Barclays filed its suspicious activity report. His representatives say there was no connection between the two events.
Sheleg was one of the biggest single donors to the Conservative party. In total, he gave £3.6 million to the Conservative Party, which got him knighted by the queen.
It remains unclear why nearly three years elapsed before Barclays filed its suspicious activity report about Sheleg’s 2018 contribution.
The $2.5 million that made its way to Sheleg began its journey in Kopytov’s Russian bank account. It then passed through Austria’s Raffeisen Bank, according to Private Eye. Raffeisen has the greatest exposure to Russia of any foreign bank, with €22.9bn of assets at risk. Readers of my book, Trump/Russia, will not be surprised to hear this as there’s a long history of dirty Russian money flowing through Raiffeisen. An infamous 2006 US State Department cable released by Wikileaks stated that that Raiffeisen served as a front for the Russian gangster Semion Mogilevich.
It took weeks for the $2.5 million to land in the Shelegs joint bank account in Britain. The day after it arrived, Sheleg made his contribution to the Conservative party.
The Barclays bank alert that sounded the alarm about Sheleg’s contribution states “that sources, including a Private Eye article note Ehud Sheleg’s close relations with Moscow… [and] connections with organized crime figures.”
Sheleg’s connections with Moscow including hosting the Russian ambassador to the UK in 2015. His organized crime ties relate to a franchise of his Halcyon art gallery in Cyprus. One of the men involved, Rustem Magdeev, is accused in UK court documents of having connections to organized criminals, a charge he denies.
The role of treasurer of the Conservative Party is often a springboard to the House of Lords, the upper house of British parliament. Seven of the last 10 treasurers were made barons.
An elevation to life peer may now be out of Sheleg’s reach. Questions have arisen in parliament about Sheleg and Kopytov. “Exactly what current and former links do the Sheleg-Kopytov family hold with key actors in the Russian state? Finally, has electoral law been broken and, relatedly, has our national security been compromised?” the chair of the Labour Party asked on the floor of the House of Commons last month. Stephen Kinnock, a Welsh MP who was threatened with a libel lawsuit for questioning Sheleg’s ties to Russia, asked when the former Conservative Party treasurer should be labeled a foreign agent.
In The Godfather, Part II, Hyman Roth’s plans to take over Cuba were foiled by Fidel Castro. Exposing Sergey Kapytov as the “ultimate source” of a Conservative Party donation may have foiled his plans as well.
