Article by Moscow Times published on December 23, 1999, entitled “Giuliani Donor linked to Russian Mob”.
Was taken down from the web in January 2019 and later restored. Available also on web archive (April 2018).
Article by Moscow Times published on December 23, 1999, entitled “Giuliani Donor linked to Russian Mob”.
It was taken down from the web in January 2019 and later restored. Also available on web archive (April 2018).
A Russian emigré in New York who has lined up campaign funding for New York Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, and given campaign donations to leading U.S. politicians, has suspected links to organized crime, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Together with his family and various businesses, Semyon “Sam” Kislin, 64, sank $46,250 into Giuliani’s 1993 and 1997 mayoral campaigns. He also helped organize key fundraising events for the New York mayor.
The Kislins or their businesses have also donated thousands of dollars to the election campaigns of President Bill Clinton, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer and former Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato, and to the National Republican Congressional Committee, AP reported Wednesday.
Kislin is a member of New York City’s Economic Development Board. He is also a commodities trader with his own company – Trans Commodities Inc. – and a prominent figure in the Russian-Jewish emigré community in Brooklyn.
“I did a lot of fund-raising for Giuliani,” Kislin was quoted as saying by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C., which interviewed him as part of its own investigation. “He’s a good man, doing a good job for the city of New York.”
But a 1994 FBI intelligence report claims Kislin is a “member or associate” of a Brighton Beach crime operation headed by Vyacheslav “the Yaponchik” Ivankov. The Yaponchik got 10 years in prison in 1997 for extortion and for a marriage deemed fraudulent and aimed only at preventing his deportation.
The Center, citing the 1994 internal FBI report, also reported that Trans Commodities – along with Blonde Management Corp., a Manhattan-based company run by Kislin’s nephew Arik – co-sponsored a visa for one Anton Malevsky, a man the report alleged to have been a Russian hit man for Moscow’s Izmailovo crime gang.
And a 1996 Interpol report obtained by the Center for Public Integrity claims that Trans Commodities Inc. was used by Lev and Mikhail Chernoi, two Uzbek-born brothers who have taken over much of Russia’s metals business, for fraud and embezzlement. The Chernoi brothers have been accused by some Russian media of involvement in organized crime. They have never been convicted of a crime.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, Kislin said he hired Mikhail Chernoi to manage Trans Commodities Inc. from 1988 to 1992. “Mikhail Chernoi is the best man I ever knew,” Kislin told the Center, in remarks quoted as part of an investigative report posted on the Internet at www.publicintegrity.org.
The Center’s exhaustive report documented other questionable campaign contributions – among them $2,000 from the Kislins in 1995 to the Clinton-Gore campaign, and $2,750 in 1996 and 1997 contributions from the president of YBM Magnex to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
U.S. authorities say YBM Magnex was a money-laundering vehicle for Semyon Mogilevich, a Hungarian-based figure alleged to be an organized-crime boss.
The Center says it has been investigating how billions of dollars of money whisked out of Russia may have ended up in U.S. safe havens – and also, how “political campaigns … end up with equally questionable contributions as suspected Russian organized crime figures seek to move into the U.S. political mainstream.