Tony Soprano would be impressed.
Two Ukrainian oligarchs and their American partners may be witnessing the collapse of their money-laundering scheme.
Ihor Kolomoisky and his pal Gennadiy Boholiubov are accused in federal court documents of buying random U.S. office buildings and factories so they could hide some of the money they allegedly stole from a Ukrainian bank.
Kolomoisky and Boholiubov, alongside Miami residents Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber, bought commercial real estate in Cleveland, Louisville and Dallas, steel plants in Kentucky, West Virginia and Michigan and a cellphone manufacturing plant in Illinois, according to the documents.
The feds say the Ukrainian billionaires bought those properties with dirty money, stolen from Ukrainian PrivatBank, which they used to own.
The complaint says Kolomoisky and Boholiubov basically loaned money to themselves and then never paid it back, leaving their bank so deep in debt that it needed a $5.5 billion government bailout. Ukraine nationalized PrivatBank in 2016 after an investigation turned up the fraud.
The FBI raided the Cleveland office park on Tuesday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. The Justice Department’s forfeiture complaint, filed Thursday in Florida, focused specifically on a 29-story Louisville tower formerly known as PNC Plaza.
Kolomoisky and Boholiubov are suspected of using an elaborate shell company structure to buy up all the real estate. One of those companies purchased then-PNC Plaza for $75 million in 2011 and was prepared to sell it for a suspiciously low $22.25 million this July, according to the complaint.
Kolomoisky and Boholiubov have denied the allegations, the Washington Post reported.
Kolomoisky made a cameo appearance in the impeachment of President Trump, refusing to set up a meeting between Trump’s personal lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.