CHICAGO – The long arm of the U.S. justice system once again has fixated on the upper echelons of Ukraine’s oligarchic class. Two moguls last week were accused of stealing billions of dollars from a Ukrainian bank they previously owned and laundering some of the proceeds by amassing assets in six states.
The U.S. Department of Justice, in a complaint filed on August 6, alleged that longtime Ukrainian business partners Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov had concealed at least $70 million of misappropriated funds in the United States by purchasing “5 million square feet of commercial real estate in Ohio, steel plants in Kentucky, West Virginia and Michigan, and cell-phone manufacturing plant in Illinois” as well as commercial real estate in Texas, “among others,” a news release stated.