• Russian Mafia - YBM -Interview with Semyon Mogilevich - NP -20Nov99

    From chandrachudcdas@gmail.com@21:1/5 to Stefan Lemieszewski on Tue Apr 21 02:45:10 2020
    On Sunday, 12 December 1999 13:30:00 UTC+5:30, Stefan Lemieszewski wrote:
    Background Note:

    It wasn’t that long ago that political figures such as Hillary Clinton,
    in her speech in Lviv, Ukraine, warned the world of the plight of the women forced into prostitution and slavery. Also some time ago, ABC aired a PrimeTime
    segment  "Girls for Sale" describing the prostitution rings in Israel importing East European women/girls for their sex trade.

    Recent articles on YBM Magnex International reveal how the above is
    just one example of a small piece in a much larger pie -- a pie which comes full circle connecting the Russian Mafia with Western politicians, executives at brokerage houses and consultants/analysts. The circle is completed when the dirty money eventually needs to be laundered and illegal business has
    to expand into legitimate sectors in search of other profits.

    Although based in Pennsylvania, YBM's main operating subsidiary was
    based in Budapest, Hungary. Most of the company's sales were in Russia, Ukraine and other former East Bloc countries. On May 13, 1998, 60 agents
    from the FBI and IRS raided YBM's company headquarters and the Ontario Securities Commission halted trade in its shares freezing CDN $900 million
    in YBM stock certificates. According to Vancouver Sun reporter David Baines, documents indicated that "the founders of YBM and its subsidiary companies are alleged to be high-ranking members of Russia's most notorious mafia gangs."

    Jacob Bogatin, YBM's president and CEO, was one of the largest shareholders. 
    Others include Semyon, Titania and Mila Mogilevich.  According to
    a May 1995 FBI report,  Mogilevich is a high-ranking member of the
    Russian mafia. The report says: "Semion (note: Russian names are often spelled variously when translated to English) Mogilevich runs an extensive prostitution operation out of the Black and White Nightclubs in Prague
    and  Budapest. Foreign law enforcement agencies have documented Mogilevich's prostitution operation as the centrepiece of his operations in Europe.
    ... to facilitate travel or residency in

    furtherance of criminal activities. Many of Semion Mogilevich's lieutenants and Mogilevich himself hold Israeli citizenship and carry Israeli passports." Israel protects criminals intentionally or inadvertently by not having extradition treaties. There were allegations that YBM shareholders Anatoly Kulachenko and Alexei Alexandrov had criminal convictions in Ukraine.

    "CTK National News Wire (A Czech news agency) reported that members
    of two Russian gangs -- Solntsovskaya, based in Moscow, and Solomonskaya, operating in Ukraine and Israel -- had met in the U Holubu restaurant in Prague on May 31, 1995 to celebrate the birthday of a high-ranking gang member." Czech police raided the meeting after receiving a tip that Mogilevich,
    described as boss of one of the gangs was to be murdered. Refrigerating
    vans were parked outside the restaurant for removing dead bodies.

    Semyon Mogilevich does have interesting connections. Articles on the
    recent RCMP raids in Ontario of a few dozen alleged Russian Mafia members (e.g. Yury Dinaburgsky, Arkady Kaplan) point out the role of Vyacheslav
    Sliva in setting up the Russian Mafia in Ontario. He is the brother-in-law
    to Vyacheslav Ivankov (currently in prison) based in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach who set up Russian mafia cells in USA.. Ivankov was a business partner of Semyon Mogilevich, who has ties with other Russian Mafia such as Sergei Mikhailov (currently running for election to the Russian Duma) and Boris Birshtein. There is an excellent ground-breaking article about Mogilevich written by Robert I. Friedman, titled "The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World" (Village Voice;

    http://www.villagevoice.com/features/9821/friedman.shtml  ). As
    a result of that article, Friedman had an assassination contract put out
    on his head. Mogilevich also had business dealings with Grigori

    Loutchansky (Nordex) who has the distinction of being the sole subject
    of a two-day meeting of Interpol involving 11 nations. The Jerusalem Post reported Loutchansky as a head of the Russian Mafia. Russian Mobster Loutchansky
    (who describes himself as an “outstanding Jewish businessman”) also attended
    DNC fundraisers in the USA for Bill Clinton (husband of Hillary who was speaking publicly against women being forced into prostitution; referred
    to above) and Al Gore. It was also widely reported that Mogilevich was
    in the centre of the $15 billion money laundering investigation at the
    Bank of New York, that involved its Senior Vice President, Natasha Gurfinkel Kagalovsky (whose husband Konstantin was Russia’s first official representative
    to the IMF and is now an executive in Yukos Oil controlled by “oligarch” Mikhail Khordokovsky, whose Menatep bank had dealings with BoNY and is
    now defunct). Also involved in the BoNY investigation was a key Swiss-Israeli shareholder, Bruce Rappaport, the Ambassador to Russia from the country
    of Antigua and Barbuda. Rappaport and BoNY were joint partners in his Swiss bank that did a lot of business with Russia.

    When YBM Magnex went belly up, a $900 million TSE flop, the lawsuits
    began, including charges made by the Ontario Securities Commission against YBM’s directors, such as the former premier of Ontario, David Peterson (G&M; 2Nov99; http://www.theglobeandmail.com/gam/ROB/19991102/UYBMMN.html).

    who is now a partner at a blue-chip Toronto law firm Cassels Brock
    & Blackwell.

    Additional background information is available by the investigative
    research analyst, Adrian du Plessis, at:

    http://www.imagen.net/howenow

    Recently, Sandra Rubin at National Post has undertaken a series of articles about Mogilevich and YBM, including her fluff interview with Mogilevich below.

    Stefan Lemieszewski

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    www.nationalpost.com

    National Post

    November 20, 1999

    My meeting with the most

    dangerous man in Russia

    Semyon Mogilyevitch came to the Moscow

    Marriott with his henchmen to explain that the

    world's police forces who are hunting him have

    got it all wrong -- he's been terribly wronged

    Sandra Rubin

    National Post

    Semyon Mogilyevitch has a maxim he is fond of repeating.

    "Where there is hesitation, hesitate." In other words, if you

    have even the slightest reservation about doing

    something, don't do it. At the moment, the matter at hand is

    coffee. It is midway through what is turning into a long

    interview on a drizzly Moscow afternoon and the six of us are

    sitting around a conference table at the Marriott hotel

    putting in orders for coffee or tea.

    But Mr. Mogilyevitch shakes his head "nyet," putting one hand up in

    the universal gesture meaning keep away. He has been talking and

    smoking almost non-stop for more than an hour and a half, and has

    taken not a sip from the sealed bottle of Russian mineral water in

    front of him. But he wants nothing. He turns to the translator, sitting
    on

    his left, and grunts a brief explanation. "This is an American hotel.
    He

    does not eat or drink in the house of the enemy."

    For Mr. Mogilyevitch, 54, the possibility of being poisoned at the

    hands of a foreign power is not as far-fetched as one might think.
    He

    is, after all, the man that U.S., British and Israeli intelligence
    say has

    been the head of the brutal Red Mafia for almost a decade -- an

    organization said to deal in arms, heroin, nuclear waste, prostitution,

    stolen art, large-scale extortion and contract killing.

    For at least five years Mr. Mogilyevitch used Canada as part of his

    criminal empire, according to the U.S. Justice Department,

    laundering hundreds of millions of dollars through YBM Magnex

    International Inc., an industrial magnet manufacturer incorporated
    in

    Alberta and traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The company

    collapsed last year after an FBI raid on its Philadelphia headquarters

    revealed Mr. Mogilyevitch's involvement. His name has also

    surfaced in connection with the recent Bank of New York

    money-laundering scandal, involving up to $10-billion (US) in

    questionable transfers from Russia.

    The Red Mafia, while numbering just several hundred people, is

    said to be far-reaching, efficient and sophisticated, ranging from

    high-tech and financial specialists to foot soldiers who cut their
    teeth

    on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Their trademark is torture, and
    they

    terrify competing crime groups such as the Italian-American mafia.

    He certainly terrifies average Russians; in Moscow they call him "The

    Grave." U.S. intelligence sources say his organization is so powerful

    that it poses a threat to the stability of entire nations, particularly
    in

    Eastern Europe, and even to NATO.

    Yet there are indications his power may be in flux. In a sweeping

    interview with the National Post, in which he veered from cold scorn

    to the verge of tears, Mr. Mogilyevitch said he is being hunted down

    by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and that his life as he

    knew it is over.

    He says he was effectively driven from his base of operations in

    Budapest because FBI pressure on business associates made it

    impossible for him to continue working there. He claims many of his

    friends are deserting him because they don't want trouble. He

    worries constantly about being kidnapped and poisoned. His

    nine-year-old son is being taunted by schoolmates and his wife

    wants a divorce.

    Life these days is no bowl of caviar.

    The road to a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Mogilyevitch was not

    without moments of dark apprehension.

    Jules Kroll, the renowned international investigator, once told me

    that, given what I had written about Mr. Mogilyevitch and YBM, it

    would be extremely dangerous, foolhardy even, to go to Eastern

    Europe in search of further interviews. "They kill journalists like
    you

    over there," he said.

    Mr. Mogilyevitch agreed to the interview, but in order to get my visa
    I

    was forced to write him -- supplying my home address, my birth date

    and my passport number -- so that he could write a letter supporting

    the application. I not only got the visa but, curiously, it was a

    diplomatic one. He also requested I submit a few clippings about

    YBM. I scrambled to find two that mentioned him barely at all but was

    subsequently told by the RCMP that he probably has a file on me

    thicker than my file on him, including all the YBM articles.

    Three days before I left Toronto, someone involved with YBM called

    the National Post and pleaded with one of my bosses not to send

    me, saying he had a terrible feeling about the trip. I was never told

    who made the call, which could have come from someone close to

    Mr. Mogilyevitch. A Canadian intelligence officer, speaking on deep

    background, told me to be "very, very careful" and offered

    interrogation tips: "Take control of the situation. Choose the venue,

    insist that it be a very public place like a hotel, bring along a driver,

    a translator -- involve as many different people as you can. Prepare

    an alternate line of questioning in case the individual in question

    becomes agitated. Do not under any circumstances go anywhere

    alone with this individual."

    In the end, Mr. Mogilyevitch himself suggested we meet at my hotel.

    He moves amid extremely tight security and arrived flanked by three

    men: his translator, his Moscow lawyer and a New York-based

    Russian journalist who acted as the go-between. His armed

    bodyguards had presumably been posted around the cavernous

    lobby earlier in the afternoon and were now indistinguishable from

    hotel guests lounging on sofas, walking quietly across the thick

    carpet, or gliding up to their rooms in glass elevators.

    My translator tried to refuse the three-day assignment when she

    found out who was to be interviewed. In the end, she agreed to take

    the job but only if she were not required to translate the actual

    meeting. I was instructed to introduce her as my assistant. "Please

    understand," she said nervously in my hotel room 10 minutes before

    he was due to arrive, "I have to live here after you go home."

    A stocky man with a cruel, heavy face, YBM's Godfather stuck out

    his hand perfunctorily when we were introduced. He avoided eye

    contact and said nothing. He is round, but not very cuddly. After a

    brief moment of awkwardness in which neither of us said a thing and

    each wondered who would break the rapidly gathering social ice, I

    led the way up the beige marble staircase toward the meeting room.

    At the top, I looked back to make sure my guests were with me. But

    Mr Mogilyevitch, his translator and lawyer had vanished. "Just keep

    walking," the go-between instructed. "They will be along in a few

    minutes." This, I was told later, was a security precaution to foil
    a

    possible kidnapping attempt.

    Mr. Mogilyevitch insists he is "not the mobster or the monster" that

    people have been led to believe. He insists that for the past five

    years he has made his living selling grain. "Just grain, not

    marijuana," he shrugs, and only within the former eastern-bloc

    countries. He later admits he is involved in some other businesses

    in Russia "but if I tell you what they are I am afraid the FBI will

    descend on them to look for dead bodies, nuclear weapons and

    drugs."

    He denies any involvement in organized crime -- but his ring may tell

    a different story. Russian crime lords, like cardinals in the Catholic

    Church, wear symbolic rings on their right hands. The bigger the

    ring, the more powerful the wearer. Mr. Mogilyevitch wears a gold

    one with a large black stone at the centre. His translator and his

    lawyer also wear rings, but theirs are noticeably smaller.

    Anyway, there is no question who is the boss. The entourage is

    subtly but unmistakably centred on Mr. Mogilyevitch, formal in a blue

    pinstripe suit and navy tie. His translator, clad all in black and

    wearing a watch set on London time, looked like he could have

    stepped off an L.A. movie set, and appeared carefully selected to

    put a North American at ease. His lawyer, a thin man in a nondescript

    brown suit, shifted restlessly in his seat but spoke not a word in
    the

    two and a half hours we sat together in the windowless room. Even

    this faceless place made the Russians wary. At one point one of Mr

    Mogilyevitch's entourage looked up and eyed the hotel sprinkler

    system suspiciously, concluding that it was a camera. He did not

    disable it; he seemed to take spy cameras for granted.

    My "assistant" sat by my side, but pointedly took not a single note.

    She absolutely refused to discuss anything afterward.

    Mr. Mogilyevitch claims the allegations against him were cooked up

    and promoted by two rogue ex-FBI agents who set out to make a

    name for themselves as specialists in Eastern European organized

    crime so that they could write a book. He insists he is a simple

    businessman, and that much of what is in his secret FBI file is wrong,

    but was taken as gospel by British, Israeli and even Canadian

    intelligence and repeated in their reports word for word. He says

    matter-of-factly that he has complete copies of all his classified
    files

    "in full colour," a feat he doesn't appear to appreciate might be

    difficult for an ordinary businessman. He offers to mail them to me
    so

    I can see the duplication, right down to the misspelling of his name.

     (As of yesterday, they hadn't arrived.)

    Pieces of the Western world's intelligence reports on Semyon

    Mogilyevitch have surfaced and the contents are unquestionably

    chilling: He has bought up much of Hungary's armaments industry

    quite legally -- posing a threat to the stability of Eastern Europe
    and

    potentially to Nato security: He is said to have sold ground-to-air

    missiles and armoured troop carriers to Iran. He is also said to have

    bought a bankrupt airline in a former central soviet republic to haul

    heroin out of the Golden Triangle. His organization reputedly controls

    everything that goes in and out of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

    According to intelligence reports, he will even arrange the illegal

    dumping of nuclear waste around Chernobyl with the help of corrupt

    anti-contamination officials in the area. It is also claimed Mr.

    Mogilyevitch traffics in stolen art, gems and museum-quality

    treasures such as Faberge eggs, and that his henchmen torture

    businessmen who balk at paying extortion.

    Asked how so many world intelligence services could have come to

    the same mistaken conclusions about him, Mr. Mogilyevitch's

    translator hesitates, sighs heavily, then poses the question.

    Mr. Mogilyevitch drops his head, shaking it in apparent disgust. This

    is not a reaction one wishes to elicit from a man with his reputation.

    For at least 15 seconds all we hear is his "tsk, tsk, tsk," over and

    over and over again. Was he buying time? Did he disapprove of the

    question?

    Finally, he answers: It all goes back to "some low-life FBI agent who

    pretended he was an expert on Russian matters and made up a file

    of people who were supposedly 'known' to Russian authorities. It

    was just made up."

    Yet in a conversation riddled with contradictions and statements that

    sometimes strained credulity, one thing emerged as quite genuine:

    Mr. Mogilyevitch's world is getting smaller and more uncomfortable

    as the FBI chases him in his tradition bases of operations.

    "What do you think," he says, his voice becoming thick with

    emotion, "I wouldn't say my life has changed -- it has disappeared.

    Myson comes home from school with bruises all over his body. He

    has been fighting with everyone who calls him the son of a killer,
    the

    son of that guy involved in drugs." The man opposite me -- a

    murderer, drug runner, money launderer and general ne'er-do-well,

    according to half the police forces in the world -- flushed crimson.
    All

    at once his eyes were swimming with tears.

    "Nobody wants to go in business with me, not because they don't

    trust me, but because they're afraid of problems if they are publicly

    allied with me. They say, 'We like you but you have to understand

    that we don't want problems with our own business.'

    "My wife wants to divorce me because she is thinking of the future of

    the child. She understands nothing good will come of all this. I would

    say 70% of my friends are keeping their distance, so the Americans

    are doing this thing very well."

    When he talks, he rarely makes eye contact but rather stares straight

    ahead or looks down at the glass ashtray in front of him, prodding

    the growing mound of cigarette butts. "I used to smoke True

    because it expressed what was inside me," he says suddenly,

    lighting another in a steady stream of German-made Davidoff

    cigarettes. "But I switched brands because I found out there is no

    such thing as 'true' in America."

    Semyon Mogilyevitch was born in Kiev, his mother a podiatrist and

    his father the manager of a large state-owned printing company. He

    says he was discriminated against in Ukraine because he was

    Jewish, although his family appears to have been affluent. After

    graduating with an economics degree from the University of Lvov, he

    held a series of government jobs. "I was always the most important

    person, the one in charge," he says with odd pride, "I was never just

    a regular person."

    He moved to Moscow in 1985 and two years later became one of

    the first Gorbachev-era businessmen allowed to make a private

    investment: He and six fellow investors ran all the food and retail

    concessions at Moscow's main airport. Intelligence reports say the

    man dubbed "The Brainy Don" was already making his first millions

    in those years by fleecing fellow Jews fleeing the Soviet Union. He

    is said to have promised to sell their art and other family treasures

    and forward them the money, only to keep everything for himself.

    He moved to Budapest in 1990 after marrying a Hungarian and,

    intelligence sources say, ran his growing criminal empire under the

    protection of a corrupt Hungarian police official until the man was

    fired this year at the U.S. government's insistence.

    But Mr. Mogilyevitch says the reason he left was that the FBI made it

    impossible for him to work there. He said the U.S. agency received

    special permission from the Hungarian government this summer to

    send eight agents over to question people directly.

    The agents set up shop in the YBM building, where he also

    apparently kept offices, although he claims he severed his direct

    ties with the Canadian magnet manufacturer in 1994, and spent two

    months canvassing people who worked there. "They put my picture

    up on the wall of an office and called in everyone from the cook to

    the girl who cleans saying, 'We are investigating this crook

    Mogilyevitch who is involved in money laundering, in prostitution,
    in

    killings -- what do you know about him?' They would say things like,

    'Tell us what that monster had for lunch. Tell us his habits, where
    he

    goes, who he sees. Tell us who his mistresses are.' Then they

    would go to the husband and say: 'Did you know your wife is

    sleeping with this bandit Mogilyevitch?' One man said he didn't

    believe it because he was married to my sister. They said to him:

    'This man is such a monster he sleeps with his own sister.'

    "If someone was building a home for a friend of mine, the police

    would come right onto the construction site and say: 'You're helping

    a friend of that monster Mogilyevitch, who has killed so many

    people. You are being paid with blood money. We are going to take

    your license away.' They identified themselves as FBI and Hungarian

    district attorneys."

    Mr. Mogilyevitch remembers a camera set up across the street from

    his office so the police could see his comings and goings. They

    monitored his faxes and tapped all his telephone lines. "There were

    more bugs in my office than in all the woods."

    Tom Pickard, assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigations

    division in Washington, declined to respond to Mr. Mogilyevitch's

    allegations and the agency said it was not prepared even to issue a

    short written statement in response.

    Mr. Mogilyevitch says that now that he has left Hungary, the FBI has

    turned its attention to Israel, and has been pressuring the Israel

    government to revoke his citizenship. (Israel gives citizenship to

    anyone claiming to be Jewish, without demanding proof, a legacy of

    the Second World War when refugees arrived on its doorstep

    without identity papers.)

    "They are asking the Israeli authorities to find some criminal activity

    they can use against me," he says scornfully. "Maybe they will find

    something that proves I am not a Jew is order to take my passport

    away but that would be very difficult because I am Jewish."

    Mr. Mogilyevitch indicates he prides himself on his Jewish

    heritage, and says he considers himself observant. While he did not

    have a bar mitzvah, he has seats in synagogues in both Moscow

    and Budapest. He maintains he fasted on Yom Kippur, the Day of

    Atonement and the holiest day of the Jewish year,

    but allowed as how he cheated a bit because he smoked, and said

    he hopes that God "doesn't read the newspapers."

    Mr. Mogilyevitch disdainfully dismisses reports that he made his first

    millions fleecing fleeing Jews: "I have been a citizen of Israel for
    10

    years, and that story was first printed five or six years ago. Since
    that

    time not one Jew in the U.S. or Israel has stepped forward to say

    they were one of my victims. But the story goes that I cheated

    thousands, so how can I clear myself against that? If someone were

    to step forward and make that claim, I would sue them and ask them

    to provide proof." It may not occur to him that no has stepped

    forward, rightly or wrongly, for fear of being tortured and killed.

    Keeping his Israeli citizenship is critical for Mr. Mogilyevitch --
    who

    admits he would not be surprised to be indicted in the YBM

    investigation -- because Israel allows virtually no extradition of
    its

    citizens. He says he does not spend as much time in Israel as he

    would like, but in the next breath indicates he doesn't really enjoy

    being there. "Too many Jews," he says, slightly contemptuously,

    exhaling a long plume of smoke. Which means? "Too much arguing.

    Everybody is talking all the time and their voices are so loud."

    Richard Crane Jr., Mr. Mogilyevitch's U.S. lawyer, says his client's

    problems are all the result of shoddy footwork by the FBI.

    Mr. Crane contends that the U.S. was left scrambling to compile

    intelligence reports on Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union

    crumbled and, in its haste, agents confused Mr. Mogilyevitch with

    Sergei Mikhailov, another alleged mob boss who was being held at

    the time in a Swiss jail on money-laundering allegations.

    Mr. Crane, who was head of the U.S. Justice Department's

    Organized Crime Strike Force for the Western United States from

    1969-1976, said from New York that he even received two phone

    calls from former colleagues "in the highest authorities" in the U.S.

    justice system saying published reports linking Mr. Mogilyevitch to

    the money-laundering scandal at Bank of New York had not come

    from them.

    "There has never been anything proven against him. Heck, he has

    never even been charged with anything," says Mr. Crane. "I know

    how these things happen and how hard it is to set it right. In the

    meantime, it's like trying to defend yourself against smoke. I'm not

    trying to make Snow White out of him, but this man is not what they

    say he is."

    Jim Moody, deputy assistant director of the FBI until he retired in

    1996, has little patience with such claims: "I personally -- personally

    -- was provided with the names of Mikhailov and Mogilyevitch by the

    Russian Ministry of the Interior as heads of organized crime groups."

    Mr. Moody, who headed up the FBI's organized-crime program for

    the last seven years of his career, adds that, "I was in organized

    crime, I wasn't even in intelligence, so that kind deflates what he

    says about the intelligence agency messing up."

    There is "absolutely no chance at all, none whatsoever" that he is a

    simple businessman as he claims, say Mr. Moody, who identified

    Mr. Mogilyevitch as a crime boss before the U.S. Congress in 1996.

    "He is one of the world's most important organized-crime leaders."

    He is somewhat skeptical of Mr. Mogilyevitch's claim he was driven

    out of Budapest by the FBI, and speculated the real reason he

    moved is his involvement with YBM: "Because he is possibly

    behind stock manipulations in Canada and the United States, he is

    probably vulnerable in Hungary as far as prosecution goes. If he

    used the telephone in committing an alleged fraud, you [the U.S.

    authorities] have venue. You can go after him that way."

    He says the possibility of prosecution makes Israeli citizenship

    doubly important to Mr. Mogilyevitch, and reveals almost every

    member of his organization holds Israeli passports. He adds that it
    is

    his understanding Mr. Mogilyevitch is banned from entering the U.S.,

    though it is widely suspected he travels on false passports.

    Mr. Mogilyevitch does not allow his picture to be taken, although

    whether for fear of being identified by U.S. immigration or

    kidnappers is unclear. He claims he has not been on American soil

    since October, 1997, even though he has two daughters and a

    granddaughter in Los Angeles. He says the family meets in

    Budapest, Kiev, Moscow or other locations in Europe for reunions.

    Asked how many children he has, Mr. Mogilyevitch looks up at the

    ceiling, doing what appear to be elaborate calculations. "I didn't

    expect a question like that to take so long to answer," I say,

    breaking the silence.

    "He is deciding who he wants to legitimize," the translator

    volunteers. He is completely serious. The answer, when it finally

    comes, is four: the two daughters in California, 27 and 19; a

    16-year-old son in London and his son, 9, in Budapest. His parents

    are dead, his sister and a brother are both dead as well. "I am the

    most durable of them all," he says, not without some irony.

    He does acknowledge that he was permanently banned from the

    United Kingdom in 1995 by special order of the Home Secretary.

    The ban came in 1995 following Operation Sword, an extensive

    money-laundering investigation centering on Mr. Mogilyevitch's British

    operations. In its final report, British intelligence called him "one
    of

    the world's top criminals" with a personal net worth of $100-million

     (US). He was not convicted of anything -- the British blamed
    a lack of

    co-operation from Moscow police -- but all his business operations

    were shut down and he was permanently expelled. "Operation

    Sword," he snorts disparagingly. "It turned out that their sword was

    made of paper."

    "I don't like England anyways, the prices are too high there. The first

    47 years of my life, I didn't go to England, so I can manage quite

    well without going to England for he rest of my life."

    Mr. Mogilyevitch, called "Syeva" by his friends, says after his

    experiences with YBM he has given up doing business in North

    America. "I don't like the United States -- it is a centre for money

    laundering and the mafia is there," he says with disdain. "Also, the

    President is morally bankrupt and uses his office to seduce young

    girls." Canada's Prime Minister has never been accused of such

    things, I point out. "Yes, but your Prime Minister is ugly," he shoots

    right back.

    He continues to deny any link to the Bank of New York

    money-laundering scandal, saying that "for the last nine years I

    wasn't even living in Russia so transferring that amount of money

    would have been impossible. Anyways, if there was one chance in a

    million that I was involved, all the special forces -- the FBI, CIA,
    MI5,

    MI6, the RCMP -- would be crawling all over me. Instead, this whole

    thing was like a hurricane blowing past and no one even mentions

    my name any more. The newspapers said I was supposed to be

    connected through this company called Benex, but no one has

    proven a thing."

    Mr. Mogilyevitch says he suspects the U.S. is now quietly


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