Semion Mogilevich

• 1. Introduction

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  Semion Mogilevich has been called, by the FBI itself, "the most powerful and dangerous gangster in the world." Agencies in the European Union and the United States go further. They describe him as the "boss of all bosses" over most Russian Mafia syndicates worldwide. They believe he directs a criminal empire worth multiple billions of dollars, with links to government officials, military figures, police officers, and powerful politicians in many countries. The bureau accuses him of weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale. He also carries two nicknames: "Don Semyon" and "The Brainy Don," the second a nod to his business acumen. How did a Ukrainian economics graduate rise to that position? Which banks, factories, and stock listings did he touch along the way? And why did investigators on several continents spend over a decade trying to prosecute him and still come away frustrated?

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• 2. From Podil to Prison

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  Kyiv's Podil neighborhood is where Mogilevich was born on the 30th of June 1946, into a Jewish family. He went on to study economics and graduated from the University of Lviv. His first significant fortune, according to the accounts, came from preying on fellow Soviet Jews. Many of them, mostly Ukrainian and Russian, were desperate to emigrate, some of them to Israel. One report describes how he acted as a middleman for emigrants leaving Kyiv in the 1980s. They needed to sell jewelry and artwork before departing. Mogilevich would agree to buy their belongings, resell them at a fair market price, and send the money along. Instead he kept every bit of it. The law did catch up with him at home, and he served two prison terms, one of 3 years and one of 4, for currency-dealing offenses. The FBI adds another layer to this period. In the 1980s, the bureau says, he was the key money-laundering contact for a Moscow gang called the Solntsevskaya Bratva. That network would reappear in his story for years. Before the decade ended, he had also spent a short stretch in Israel in 1990, the country many of his victims had hoped to reach.

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• 3. Fortress Near Budapest

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  In early 1991, Mogilevich moved to Hungary and married his Hungarian girlfriend, Katalin Papp. The marriage brought a practical reward: a Hungarian passport. His family life was complicated. He has at least three children, a daughter with his ex-wife Tatiana Markova, a son with another ex-wife, Galina Grigorieva, and a son with Papp. He settled into a fortified villa outside Budapest and kept putting money into local enterprises. One purchase stands out. He acquired an armament factory called "Army Co-Op," which manufactured anti-aircraft guns. A far larger prize came in 1994. His group took control of Inkombank, one of the biggest private banks in Russia, through a secret arrangement with the bank's chairman, Vladimir Vinogradov. The deal gave the group a direct line into the global financial system. Suspicions of money laundering hung over the bank, and it collapsed in 1998. By then, trouble had already found its way to Mogilevich in another capital.

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• 4. Night at U Holubů

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  In May 1995, Czech police raided a restaurant in Prague called "U Holubů." Mogilevich owned the place. The occasion was a birthday party for a deputy of the Solntsevo gang, and the guest list was meant to include Sergei Mikhailov, the group's head, along with Mogilevich. Roughly two hundred partygoers were detained, among them dozens of prostitutes, and 30 people were expelled from the country. Police had received a tip that the Solntsevo group planned to kill Mogilevich at the party. A disputed payment of $5 million lay behind the plot. Mogilevich never showed up. It is believed that a senior figure in the Czech police, secretly cooperating with the Russian mafia, warned him in time. The consequences arrived quickly. The Czech Interior Ministry imposed a ten-year entry ban on him. Hungary declared him persona non grata. Britain refused him entry and labeled him "one of the most dangerous men in the world." Both he and Mikhailov stopped traveling to the West in the late 1990s.

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• 5. Trouble in Toronto

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  Canadian journalists did what many police forces had not. In 1997 and 1998, they exposed who stood behind YBM Magnex International, a public company trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Mogilevich and Mikhailov were among those named. On the 13th of May 1998, dozens of agents from the FBI and several other U.S. government agencies raided the company's headquarters in Newtown, Pennsylvania. The company's shares had been valued at $1 billion. They became worthless overnight. Years later, in 2003, the FBI placed Mogilevich on its Wanted List for taking part in the scheme to defraud YBM's investors. The choice of charge was telling. Investigators had failed in earlier attempts to charge him over arms trafficking and prostitution, so large-scale fraud became their best hope of finally catching him. In a 2006 interview, Jon Winer, an anti-organized-crime official under President Clinton, offered a blunt assessment. "I can tell you that Semion Mogilevich is as serious an organized criminal as I have ever encountered and I am confident that he is responsible for contract killings."

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• 6. Fuel, Banks, and Waste

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  Highly taxed car fuel was being sold as untaxed heating oil, and Mogilevich was suspected of taking part. The scandal erupted around 1990-1991. Estimates suggest up to one-third of fuel sold went through the scheme, draining tax revenue in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland. In the Czech Republic alone, the loss is estimated at around 100 billion CZK, roughly US$5 billion. The affair involved murders and an attempted assassination of a journalist who was writing about it. Money moved through banks as well. Until 1998, Inkombank and Bank Menatep took part in a US$10 billion money laundering scheme that ran through the Bank of New York. Another plan, described by an FBI informant in 1998, was stranger still. One of Mogilevich's chief lieutenants in Los Angeles reportedly met two Russians from New York City who had ties to the Genovese crime family. The idea was to ship American toxic waste to Russia or Ukraine. According to a classified FBI report, the "Red Mafia" would dispose of it in the Chernobyl region, probably through payoffs connected to the decontamination work there. Another Italian link, the FBI says, ran to the Camorra. Mogilevich is reported to have met Salvatore De Falco, a lower-echelon member of the Giuliano clan, in Prague in 1993.

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• 7. Powerful Friends and Rumors

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  US diplomatic cables say Mogilevich controls RosUkrEnergo, a company deeply involved in the gas disputes between Russia and Ukraine. They name Ivan Gordiyenko as his partner. Ivan Fursin has also been closely linked to him. Politics brushes against the story in other places. Oleksandr Turchynov, who became acting President of Ukraine in February 2014, appeared in court in 2010. He stood accused of destroying files about Mogilevich. Shortly before his assassination, the Russian FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko claimed that Mogilevich had enjoyed a "good relationship" with Vladimir Putin since the 1990s. A link of a different kind appears in New York. In the early 1990s, the real estate developer Donald Trump, later a U.S. president, sold numerous properties to people with ties to the Russian mafia. Mogilevich was among the early investors and bought an apartment in Trump Tower. His American legal representation was notable too. William S. Sessions, who directed the FBI from 1987 to 1993 under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush, served as Mogilevich's attorney in the United States until Sessions died on the 12th of June 2020.

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• 8. The Long Chase

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  On the 24th of January 2008, Russian authorities arrested Mogilevich in Moscow on suspicion of tax evasion. Bail was set, and he walked free on the 24th of July 2009. The Russian interior ministry explained that the charges against him were "not of a particularly grave nature." Three months later, on the 22nd of October 2009, the FBI named him the 494th fugitive on its Ten Most Wanted list. In December 2015, the bureau took him off. He no longer met the list's criteria, the FBI indicated, because he lived in a country with no extradition treaty with the United States. According to the FBI, he lives freely in Moscow. One journalist captured his career in a single line: he had "a knack for never being in the wrong place at the wrong time." On the 6th of April 2022, the bureau renewed its effort, working with the U.S. Department of State. Through its Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program, the department now offers up to $5 million for information leading to his arrest or conviction.

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