Corrections and clarifications: An earlier of this tale distorted the country of origin of Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov. They’re Ukrainians.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. Federal prosecutors are suing to seize the construction of downtown Louisville formerly known as PNC Plaza, claiming that it secretly belongs to billionaire Ukrainian oligarchs and used to launder billions of dollars they looted from a bank they owed in the east. European country.
In a lawsuit filed this week in Miami, the government said oligarchs and their agents in the United States had purchased the 29-story tower, as well as assets in Dallas and Cleveland, with cash ” traceable to a foreign plot of seeded cash laundering. and fraudulently received from the bank. »
The program was conducted in the United States through Ukrainians operating in a workplace in a 55th-floor penthouse in Miami corporations with a variant of the so-called “Optima,” according to demand.
500-W. Jefferson St. Louisville Tower was purchased in 2011 through Optima Management Group LLC for $77 million, but struggled after moving the largest tenant, PNC Financial Services.
The 580,000-square-foot construction was purchased last year through the judicial administration through New York-based Somera Road Inc., according to a Business First article, however, the government’s forfeiture claim indicates that 95% is still maintained through an Optima subsidiary.
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Jefferson County asset records show that the owner is indexed as 500 West Jefferson Street LLC, and corporate records show that the sole owner is Ruairidh Henderson, who works for Somera Road in New York.
But in a phone interview Friday, Henderson said he had never heard of construction and knew nothing about it.
In a follow-up interview, when a journalist noted that Somera Road indexed as a client on a published account, and that a plaque with his call is displayed in the lobby, he refused to comment further.
Louisville attorney Don Cox, whose law firm has been in construction for about 10 years, said he was surprised to be informed of the background of its secret owner.
The government said that for more than a decade, billionaires Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov used their PrivatBank to borrow billions of dollars from their funds.
The losses were such that Ukraine had to bail out the bank by offering $5.5 billion to avert an economic crisis in the country.
In 2017, Kolomoisky, one of the world’s richest men, self-imposed himself in Switzerland and then Israel after he confiscated his valuable asset, Privatbank, and accused him of embezzlement billions of dollars, the New York Times reported.
He returned to Ukraine after comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the oligarch’s former business partner, was elected president last year.
FBI agents attacked Optima’s homes in Cleveland and Miami this week, according to press reports.
The lawsuit says dozens of Optima entities in the United States were controlled by a guy named Mordechai Korf, also known as “Motti”, an associate of Kolomoisky and Boholiubov in Miami.
Cox said he saw Korf at the construction site and he was driving it.
The government said PrivatBank accounted for about a quarter of Ukraine’s banking sector and a third of the individual deposit accounts, but that after the sacking of Kolomoisky and Boholiubov, it was nationalized in 2016.
Prosecutors say the fundamental concept of the program was simple. Kolomoisky and Boholiubov asked PrivatBank for money, which they earned because of their control and ownership.
They rarely repaid the loans through new loans, the lawsuit says.
The mechanisms of the formula were complex, according to the government. Kolomoisky and Boholiubov used a collection of corporations that owned or controlled privatBank’s loans.
A PrivatBank army then papered and treated the loans as if they were legitimate.
A bank’s “special” lending committee approved the loans, despite misrepresentations in applications.
When the loans expired, other loans were used to cancel old loans or, in some cases, repaid with the source of income from the investment of the embezzled money, the lawsuit says.
Boston-based attorney Kolomoisky Michael Sullivan did not respond to a request for comment.
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