Interest

RUSSIA
has reportedly used at least twice each in the
past. See “Semion Mogilevich Dossier,” Russian
Mafia Blog. Arbat Capital, registered in
2003, was still active as of December 2016, as
was Arigon Overseas, registered in 2007.
72 See the diagram below.
73 These three offshore companies are not in
the Panama Papers database. Firtash acknowledged
these connections to Telesh but
still told FT reporters that he didn’t know her.
See Tom Warner, “Key man in Ukraine gas
dispute faces questions,” Financial Times, July
13, 2006. The three companies identified in
the report are (1) Highrock Holdings, which
Firtash and Telesh each reportedly owned onethird
of, and of which Firtash served as director
beginning in 2001; (2) Agatheas Holdings,
where Firtash apparently replaced Telesh as
director in 2003; and (3) Elmstad Trading,
a Cyprus company owned by Firtash that in
2002 transferred the shares of a Russian company
named Rinvey to Telesh and two other
people—one of them Firtash’s lawyer and the
other the wife of a reputed Mogilevich business
partner. See also Michael Weiss, “Married
to the Ukrainian Mob,” Foreign Policy, March
19, 2014.
74 On Mogilevich, see, for example, “Nationwide
Con Artist, Part One,” Russian Mafia Blog,
June 27, 2011.
75 See also ““Semion Mogilevich Organization:
Eurasian Organized Crime.”
76 Pat Huddleston, “How to spot fraud and be a
vigilant investor,” Globe and Mail, October 3,
2011.
77 See “FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives: Semion
Mogilevich,” Federal Bureau of Investigations
Archives, October 21, 2009; and Justin Peters,
“This Obese Mob Boss Is Twice the Villain
Whitey Bulger Ever Was,” Slate, August 5,
2013.
78 David Cay Johnston, interview with the author,
November 2016. Wayne Barrett, Trump: The
Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall,
the Reinvention (Regan Arts, 2016).
79 Johnston, interview; see also John Tuohy, “The
Superpower of Crime,” Russian Mafia Gangster
Blog, December 2012. In another interesting
coincidence, the President of YBM Magnex
was also reportedly a financial director of
Highrock in the late 1990s, before Manafortclient
Dmytro Firtash joined the company as
a director in 2001. See also Michael Weiss,
“Married to the Ukrainian Mob.”
80 John Shanahan, “Trump: U.S. Should Stop
Paying to Defend Countries that Can Protect
Selves,” Associated Press News Archive, September
1, 1987.
81 Joanna Walters & Martin Pengelly, “Robert
Gates Criticises ‘Laid-Back’ US Response to
Russia Election Hack,” Guardian, December
18, 2016.
There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are
churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant
and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and
suddenly fascinates, captures, and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible
people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens
that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history.
—Norman Cohn,
Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion (2006), p. 18
26 THE AMERICAN INTEREST