Businessman Semen Mogilevich (Sergey Schnaider) has been charged with tax evasion in Moscow.
Photo: Alexander Miridonov
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U.S. Plans against International Crime
The U.S. Justice Department has a new strategy for fighting international organized crime. It has submitted a document to the White House that proposes reviving the Attorney General's Organized Crime Council and improving coordination between agencies that fight international crime groups. The document claims that organized crime has infiltrated the energy sector and other strategic industries. Russian crime groups provide important motivation for the proposed steps. A Kommersant source close to American law enforcement called the document “a signal to the Kremlin.”
The Law Enforcement Strategy to Combat International Organized Crime is a 16-page document containing the combined recommendations of the Justice Department, FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to a Kommersant source, it “touches on the topics of possible connections between Russian authorities and organized crime and on schemes for money laundering by Russian organized crime groups, including through several companies whose stock or ADR have been placed on the New York and London Stock Exchanges.”
The report mentions the money laundering case involving the Bank of New York and its Russian-born vice president Lucy Edwards in 2000 and the 2005 case of Moscow's Intellect Bank, which transferred money to front companies in Utah. It also mentions Semen Mogilevich, who has faced 45 charges of money laundering and embezzlement in Pennsylvania since 2003 and who allegedly controls the natural gas sectors in some CIS countries. Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer recently arrested in Thailand, is used as one example of how international crime threatens U.S. security by aiding terrorist, foreign governments and their spies.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 25, 2008
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