The boss of bosses and his impressive financial empire (unofficial autobiography)
My name is Semyon Yudkovich Mogilevich…
My name is Semyon Yudkovich Mogilevich, and I was born on June 30, 1946, in Kiev, Ukraine, into a typical middle-class Jewish family.
My parents were Genya Tevevna Shepelskaya and Yudka Mogilevich.
When I was 22, I graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Lvov, one of the most prestigious universities.
“He is a brilliant student,” says one of my professors, “he has a very good memory and can multiply, divide and add even seven-digit numbers instantly”.
Another professor says that my strong interest in macroeconomics gives me insight into the national and world economy.
Everyone is convinced that I can become a great university professor.
But my fate was already sealed.
In 1970, I end up at Lyubertskaya in Moscow, an organization that specializes in micro-fraud and petty theft.
Unfortunately, luck was not on my side.
I was arrested.
I spent seven years in prison for crimes related to black market currency exchange.
My first big break came in 1980, when the Soviet government allowed Russian Jews to travel to Israel.
However, once an exit visa is obtained, Jewish families who want to leave have only a few days to do so.
Many families own valuable antiques and jewelry, the export of which is strictly forbidden by the authorities, so I came up with the idea of applying to be the “guardian” of these treasures that the families are forced to leave behind in the Soviet Union.
Basically, I would be responsible for selling these items and sending the proceeds to their rightful owners in Israel.
This is a small amount of wealth I am accumulating by selling what belonged to thousands of families who were forced to leave the Soviet Union as quickly as possible.
I decided to keep everything I collected for myself, trusting that these people would never be able to claim anything against me.
By 1990, I had accumulated several million dollars, which I laundered through arms smuggling, prostitution, gambling, drugs, and the black market.
1990 is also a special year.
It witnessed the collapse of the Soviet regime, and the various underworld groups gained a fair amount of power.
Unfortunately, the government is waging a fierce battle against them, and I realize that it’s better to make a change.
At least for a while.
In the company of my henchmen, I decide to leave Moscow and move to Israel, where I become a citizen and forge relationships with other emerging Russian and Israeli groups, expanding my little empire.
They see me as someone who can juggle the complex international financial mechanisms.
I invest capital by acquiring companies.
I buy nightclubs, jewelry factories, art galleries, liquor factories and more, but I also continue to expand my network of illegal activities, such as prostitution, weapons and drugs, through numerous offshore companies.
In 1991, I married a young Hungarian woman, Katalin Papp, and this enabled me to obtain my fourth nationality in 1992, after Ukrainian, Russian and Israeli, through a Hungarian passport.
I love to be considered a “citizen of the world”.
At this point I decided to move the headquarters of my organization to Budapest, following the example of the Israeli one.
Budapest is a safe haven and has a solid and advanced banking system.
Formally, I am a cereal and grain merchant, but everyone now considers me one of the most cunning and powerful bosses in the world.
No one can stop me now….
No one can stop me now.
My business is laundering dirty money from illegal activities, an ingenious game of matryoshka and Chinese boxes.
I invest mainly in the business of night clubs, restaurants and alcohol production.
I create an organization of about 250 members, modeled on the Cosa Nostra.
Thanks to their cover, I manage to expand my business without any particular problems and acquire a small “private army” of about a hundred members, mostly former fighters in Afghanistan and veterans of the Special Forces.
Men willing to do anything, like my faithful Igor Tkachenko, feared in every corner of the planet.
In 1992, I also bought a weapons factory, the “Army Co-Op”, which produces anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles.
In 1993, I made a deal with the Solntsevskaya Brava, one of the most influential organizations in Moscow, to manage the trafficking of stolen art and antiquities from churches and museums in Eastern Europe.
Finally, in 1994, I managed to seize Inkombank, one of Russia’s most important private banks, by making a secret pact with the bank’s chairman, Vladimir Vinogradov.
This gave me direct access to the world financial system.
Inkombank has one feature that is essential to my interests : the immense network of correspondent accounts it has virtually everywhere, in the world’s major banks, such as Bank of China, Union Bank of Switzerland, Swiss Bank Corp., Deutchebank and Bank of New York.
The latter is particularly interesting since all my major transactions are in U.S. dollars.
In December 1994, my wife died.
I consider returning to Russia, but decide to stay in Budapest and continue to develop my war business.
I acquire two more defense industries : Magnex 2000 and Digep General Machine Works.
These last transactions allowed me to gain control of the Hungarian defense industry.
At the same time, I grab supply contracts in the Muslim countries of the Middle East, including Iraq, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.
These countries become my main market for arms sales.
I even managed to move a shipment stolen in East Germany, including surface-to-air missiles and a dozen armored vehicles, to Iran.
All in coordination with Mossad, of course.
In 1995, I married Galina Alexeyevna Telesh-Yambulskaya, a Russian woman of the Jewish religion, who was my mistress for many years.
On May 31, at a restaurant I owned in Prague called “U Holubů,” while a meeting was in progress between some members of my group and those from Solntsevo, the police raided the place to prevent a settling of scores between my organization and the Moscow organization.
Two hundred people were arrested.
In 1996, through Inkombank, I managed to acquire a significant stake in Sukhoy, a Russian factory for combat aircraft, some of them capable of carrying nuclear bombs.
In three years, I realized a turnover of more than one billion dollars, mostly from sales in Iraq, Iran, India and Libya.
For many years I have operated unchallenged in Europe, the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and the United Kingdom.
I also have contacts with organizations in South America, Pakistan and Japan.
In 1997, I attempted to sell a three-ton shipment of enriched uranium to Middle Eastern buyers and succeeded in smuggling it out of Warsaw Pact stockpiles.
The meeting with the “customers” was to take place at a resort in Karlovy Vary, but Czech police intervened, recovered the radioactive material, and arrested my men.
In 1998, the media discovered my dealings with Sergei Mikhailov and other members of the Russian Mafia in YBM Magnex International Inc., a company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and on May 13, dozens of FBI agents raided YBM’s headquarters in Newtown, Pennsylvania.
The company’s stock, valued at more than $1 billion, completely lost its value overnight.
In September 1999, my name appears in an investigation by the Rimini Prosecutor’s Office into some accounts in Italian banks belonging to Russian mobsters operating in Italy.
The investigation reveals my involvement in the scandal involving Boris Yeltsin’s family members, some high Russian officials and organized crime figures, concerning the laundering of $10 billion, part of which came from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
In 2000, the FBI established a task force with the Hungarian police to combat organized crime in Eastern Europe, and in 2003 put my name on the “Most Wanted” list.
The international warrant lists me as “dangerous, armed, and a flight risk.
According to the FBI, I am responsible, along with my accomplices, for the massive $150 million fraud that YBM Magnex International Inc. perpetrated on American and Canadian investors.
The warrant lists up to 45 counts, including racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering.
In 2003, I decided to return to Russia.
I settled in a beautiful dacha outside Moscow, where I live and quietly conduct my business.
In 2003, Turkmenistan and Russia signed a major contract to market large quantities of Turkmen gas to Gazprom, some of which was destined for Ukraine.
The intermediary between the Turkmen company and Gazprom is EuralTransGas (Etg), based in a small Hungarian village called Csadba.
Among the founders and shareholders of this company are an Israeli citizen, Zeev Gordon-Averbuch, who is also my legal advisor, and Ukrainian businessman Dmitry Firtash, who heads the Israeli subsidiary of the company, whose chief financial officer is Igor Fisherman, listed by the FBI as my accomplice in the YBM Magnex fraud.
Since 2004, Etg has completely disappeared from the scene and a more important Russian-Ukrainian brokerage company has emerged in Switzerland: RosUkrEnergo (Rue), whose shares are split in half between a Gazprom subsidiary and an Austrian company, Centragas Holdings, which in turn is controlled by another Austrian company, Raiffeisen Investment, whose opacity has been denounced.
Rue’s monopoly concerns the supply of Turkmen gas, which is sold to Gazprom and exported to Ukraine by the Ukrainian state company Naftogaz.
Dmitry Firtash, whose identity remains unknown, is still one of Rue’s majority shareholders.
The press immediately associates him with me, despite my repeated denials.
After all, my name does not appear on any paper or legal document.
After all, my name does not appear on any paper or legal document…
As the so-called Orange Revolution takes hold in Ukraine, the head of the Ukrainian Security Service, Turchinov, launches an investigation into the Rue and speculates about my possible connection.
In Russia, friends supported me by saying that Turchinov’s move was only aimed at discrediting Gazprom and its supplies to Ukraine.
In the fall of 2005, Turchinov resigned and the file on him that had been compiled over more than 12 years was destroyed.
In the same year, the Russian daily Moskovsky Komsomolets was forced to apologize to me for devoting an extensive article to my life and (alleged) misdeeds. In the article, however, an anonymous Russian investigator claimed that “I enjoy solid and high protection in Moscow.
In January 2006, with the outbreak of the “gas war” between Kiev and Moscow, the Rue gains further visibility and is criticized by both the Ukrainian and Western sides for its alleged opacity.
Turkmen gas is exported to Ukraine separately from Russian gas.
This amounts to more than 30 billion cubic meters per year, for which Rue collects just under three dollars per 1,000 cubic meters.
On January 23, 2008, in central Moscow, about fifty riot police arrested me and Vladimir Nekrasov, owner of Arbat Prestige, a large Russian chain of cosmetics stores, as we walked down the street near a supermarket.
We were flanked by our bodyguards, but we surrendered without resistance.
Nekrasov and I were charged with fraud as part of an investigation into alleged tax evasion of about 50 million rubles ($2 million), a crime punishable by up to six years in prison.
I was released on bail on July 24, 2009.
Upon my release, the Russian Interior Ministry stated that the charges against me were “not of a particularly serious nature”.
On October 22, 2009, the FBI placed me on its list of the ten most wanted fugitives.
The FBI did not remove my name from the list until December 2015, stating that I no longer met the necessary criteria.
I live in a country with which the United States does not have an extradition treaty.
According to FBI reports, I also had alliances with the Italian Camorra, specifically with Salvatore De Falco, a low-level member of the Giuliano clan.
According to the FBI, Mogilevich lives at large in Moscow.
Law enforcement agencies around the world have been trying to catch me for more than a decade.
However, in the words of one journalist, I possess “the ability to never be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On April 6, 2022, the Bureau renewed its efforts to capture me by working with the U.S. State Department.
The U.S. State Department’s Transnational Organized Crime Reward Program is now offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to my arrest and/or conviction.
