Senator: Oligarch linked to Kremlin earned millions while fighting extradition to U.S.
A U.S. senator alleges that a Ukrainian oligarch and Paul Manafort associate who has been linked to Russian organized crime has made "hundreds of millions" in "illicit profits" while fighting extradition to the U.S.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., wrote in an April 2018 letter obtained by NBC News that Dmytro Firtash had served as a "direct agent of the Kremlin" and was using the money earned from ongoing "corruption" to delay his extradition to Chicago, where he has been under federal indictment since 2014.
"This corruption undermines Ukrainian reform efforts that the United States strongly supports," Wicker wrote to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He asked Sessions about the status of Firtash's extradition case.
The contents of Wicker's letter, which was obtained by NBC News after Freedom of Information Act litigation with the Justice Department, have not previously been reported.
Firtash was indicted in 2014 for what federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois allege was his role in bribing Indian officials in order to get a lucrative mining deal to sell titanium to Boeing. He was arrested in Vienna in March 2014, released on $174 million bail, and has been contesting his extradition to the U.S. ever since.
Federal prosecutors said in a 2017 filing that Firtash and his co-defendant in the alleged scheme, Andras Knopp, "have been identified by United States law enforcement as two upper-echelon associates of Russian organized crime."
[link:https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senator-oligarch-linked-kremlin-earned-millions-while-fighting-extradition-u-n1013661|
= new reply since forum marked as read
"Every single one is a lie," Davis said. "There are no facts to support them."
Davis, a former Bill Clinton aide who also serves as a spokesperson for former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, threatened NBC News with a defamation lawsuit if the contents of the Wicker letter were published.
"It appears that Sen. Wicker wrote the letter based upon misinformation," Davis said, "possibly using language similar to that used by a biased top manager of a large Ukrainian state-owned company who might be interested in building a vertically integrated monopoly in [the] gas business."
Too many mobsters and their lawyers to keep track of
Well, good for Senator Wicker, so what if this letter is over a year old