Oligarch Lev Leviev hiding in Russia; son, brother arrested in Israel; Leviev linked to Kushner/DT

[pnwmom]

Last edited Wed Nov 14, 2018, 04:24 PM - Edit history (3)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/brother-and-son-of-gem-mogul-leviev-arrested-in-diamond-smuggling-probe/

The son and brother of Russian-Israeli diamond billionaire and philanthropist Lev Leviev have been arrested in connection with a smuggling operation that brought hundreds of millions of shekels’ worth of diamonds into Israel hidden in suitcases.

Leviev himself is reportedly being sought by authorities for questioning over the case, which first broke into the open Monday, but he is refusing to return to Israel.

Zevulun and Moshe Leviev were among six suspects held on suspicion of smuggling. The pair had run a factory owned by Lev Leviev and the remaining four suspects held senior positions in his company. The remand of all six suspects was extended until Sunday by the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court.


Police and Tax Authority officials also believe Leviev played a role in the sting, according to the Walla news website, which did not specify what he is suspected of.


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Associates of Leviev told Hadashot news that Leviev was refusing to return to Israel and would only agree to be questioned abroad.

According to Israel’s Channel 10 news, police are considering requesting his extradition from Russia, where he recently moved from London.



https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/who-is-the-israeli-billionaire-with-ties-to-kushner-and-putin-1.5435007

WHO IS LEV LEVIEV? (article from 2017)

This week’s news stories don’t link Leviev with specific accusations; rather, they indicate a number of business and social relationships that connect him to Vladimir Putin and Kremlin-related businesses, as well as to the Trump Organization. Leviev was a business partner of Prevezon Holdings, the Russian firm that was accused of money-laundering, and that, after it was represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya, got off with a $6 million slap on the wrist. The Prevezon scam had been exposed in 2009 by Russian whistleblower accountant Sergei Magnitsky, who a short time later died in a Moscow prison under suspicious conditions. It was his death that led to the American passage of the sanctions – in the form of the Magnitsky Act – that Veselnitskaya said she was lobbying to have cancelled when she met with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner and others at Trump Tower last summer. It was to avenge the Magnitsky sanctions that Putin in 2012 abruptly prohibited American citizens from adopting any more children from Russia; readers will remember that Trump has said that “adoptions” was the subject of his off-the-record second conversation with Putin at the G-20 meeting in Hamburg two weeks ago. Now, the Justice Department’s decision to settle with Prevezon last May is likely to come under renewed scrutiny by investigators in the U.S.

The Guardian this week reported on several joint business ventures that Prevezon undertook with Leviev’s Africa-Israel Investments, both in the U.S. and Europe, and which were later alleged to be vehicles for money-laundering by Prevezon.

In 2015, the Kushner real-estate company purchased four floors of the old New York Times building, on West 43rd St., for $295 million. The seller was Lev Leviev’s U.S. branch of Africa-Israel Investments, in partnership with Five Mile Capital. According to the Washington Post, Kushner took a loan from Deutsche Bank in October 2016 – a month before Election Day – to refinance the Manhattan property, which was now valued at $74 million above what he paid for it a year earlier.

Deutsche Bank has been of interest to a variety of different federal investigators for its involvement in a Russian money-laundering scheme, and it settled at least one related case with the U.S. Federal Reserve two months ago.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-kushner-testifies-real-estate-deal-with-israeli-oligarch-scrutinized/

US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner made a multi-million-dollar real estate deal with a Russian-Israeli oligarch whose company was embroiled in a government-prosecuted money laundering case, The Guardian reported Monday.

The oligarch, Lev Leviev, avoided trial with a financial settlement — a year after Kushner and other members of Trump’s campaign team met with the company’s legal counsel in New York, the report said.

Earlier this month 16 Democrat members of the House judiciary committee wrote to the US Justice Department to ask if there was any interference in the pretrial deal with the Russian-owned company Prevezon Holdings, which is partnered with Leviev, a diamond and real estate mogul.


According to the report, real estate deals involving the Trump family are inviting the close scrutiny of the Justice Department’s special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating suspected collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

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[triron]

1. Never know where this will go.

[pnwmom]

2. Yup. But the more Trump associates arrested, the better. n/t

[Me.]

3. So When On Earth Is Kushner Going To Be WEaring Stripes

No wonder he fits in with that family