On August 6, the U.S. Department of Justice filed two civil actions for confiscation of property in the District Court for the Southern District of Florida, claiming that commercial real estate in Louisville, Kentucky and Dallas, Texas were acquired using funds misappropriated from PrivatBank and are subject to confiscation on the basis of violations of federal money laundering laws.
The complaints allege that Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov, who owned PrivatBank, embezzled and robbed bank for billions of dollars. They received fraudulent loans and lines of credit from about 2008 to 2016, when the scheme was disclosed and the bank was nationalized.
The complaints allege that Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholyubov embezzled and defrauded money using a variety of shell companies’ bank accounts, mostly at the PrivatBank branch in Cyprus, before transferring funds to the United States. Loans were rarely repaid.
The complaints also note that the accomplices of Kolomoisky and Boholyubov – Mordechai Korfa and Uriel Laber, operating out of their offices in Miami, the United States, have created a web of organizations called “Optima” to further launder and invest the misappropriated funds. They acquired hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate and businesses across the country, including items subject to confiscation: an office tower in Louisville, known as PNC Plaza, and an office park in Dallas, known as the former headquarters of CompuCom. The total cost of the buildings is about USD 70 million.
“The FBI unit in Cleveland, in cooperation with the FBI’s International Corruption Department, the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Department and the US Customs and Border Protection Service, and the Department of International Affairs of the Department of Justice provided significant assistance in the investigation of the case,” the U.S. Department of Justice said.
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