House of Trump, House of Putin2

by Craig Unger

Vinokur, Vladimir, 263–64

  “virtual” war waged on the West, 2, 17–18, 191–96, 221, 222, 231, 252–53, 255–56

  Vnesheconombank (VEB), 146

  Vogel, Ken, 233

  Volkov, Oleksandr, 171

  vory v zakone (“thieves-in-law”), 31–32, 64, 83, 197

  VR Systems, 260

  warfare in the modern age, 2, 17–18, 191–96, 221, 222, 231, 252–53, 255–56

  Wasserman Schultz, Debbie, 251

  Weaver, Constance A., 171

  Weldon, Curt, 120

  Western Alliance, 2, 17, 52, 195

  White Rock Partners, 133

  WikiLeaks, 17, 111, 223, 228, 251, 254, 255–56, 259–60, 261

  Wilders, Geert, 17

  Winer, Jonathan, 12–13, 62, 155, 156

  Winter Is Coming (Kasparov), 19

  “Without Sky” (short story), 191

  Wolf, Robert S., 132, 133n, 135, 150, 155–56, 158

  Yakunin, Vladimir, 242

  Yanukovych, Viktor, 17, 180–81, 183, 189–90, 231, 279

  YBM Magnex, 107, 108–09, 199

  Yegorov, Nikolai, 95–96

  Yeltsin, Boris, 60, 61, 73, 95–97, 99–102, 103–04

  Yevtushenko, Vladimir, 94n

  Young Executioners, 48–49

  Yukos oil and gas company, 75–76

  Yushchenko, Viktor, 181

  Zackson, Brad, 21

  Zakrevska, Eugenia, 190

  Zander Group, 234

  Zelniček, Milos, 42–43

  Zelníčková, Ivana, 38–39, 53–54, 65

  Zhukova, Dasha, 160

  Ziff Brothers Investments LLC, 239

  Zucker, Symon, 146

  Zuckerberg, Mark, 257

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Craig Unger is the author of the New York Times bestselling House of Bush, House of Saud. He appears frequently as an analyst on CNN, the ABC Radio Network, and other broadcast outlets. The former deputy editor of The New York Observer and editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine, he has written about this subject for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. He lives in New York City.

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  * The terms “Russian Mafia” and “ROC” (Russian organized crime), though not geographically correct, are widely used by law enforcement authorities to refer to organized crime from all the republics of the former Soviet Union, not just the Russian Federation.

  * The Five Families were the Colombos, the Gambinos, the Bonannos, the Luccheses, and the Genoveses.

  * Though he worked with Russian gangsters and was often identified as Russian, Markowitz was actually Romanian.

  * In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia shortly before the 2004 Istanbul summit. They were subsequently joined by Albania, Croatia, and, most recently, Montenegro. And that does not count East Germany, which, of course, became part of NATO when it reunited with West Germany.

  * According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least fifty-eight journalists have been murdered in Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. The figure goes up to eighty-two deaths if one includes those for which a motive has not been confirmed. These figures do not include the murders of Alexander Litvinenko or other people who were killed outside Russia and who, also like Litvinenko, were investigating corruption in Russia outside the context of journalism.

  * Among the biographers who have explored Trump’s ties to organized crime are Gwenda Blair, author of The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a Presidential Candidate; Wayne Barrett, author of Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth; David Cay Johnston, author of The Making of Donald Trump; Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, authors of Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President; and Tim O’Brien, author of Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald.

  * Notwithstanding Trump’s fondness for Cohn, their relationship did not end well. Toward the end of his life, Cohn, who was gay, asked Trump for a favor: His lover was dying of AIDS. Could Trump get him a hotel room? As Vanity Fair reported, a room was found, but a few months later, Cohn got the bill and refused to pay. More bills followed. At some point, according to the New York Times, Trump presented Cohn with a pair of diamond cuff links as a thank-you gift for their friendship. But the diamonds turned out to be fakes. Toward his last days in 1986, the dying Cohn said, “Donald pisses ice water.”

  * Cohn’s bark was ferocious, but it was often far worse than his bite. As a senior editor of New York magazine in 1979, I had a run-in with Roy Cohn over a story written by Henry Post that exposed the Studio 54 tax evasion scam. Before publication, Cohn called me, yelled at me, and threatened to sue the magazine unless we killed the story. In the end, we ran the story, Cohn’s clients went to jail, and he never sued.

  * The FBI investigated Kislin in the 1990s for allegations including mob ties and laundering money from Russia. He was never charged, and he maintains his innocence.

  * The term “gulag” refers to Russia’s forced labor camps that date back to the seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century era of Peter the Great and the tsars who first developed the idea of exile in Siberia as a punishment, but the word is an acronym derived from the phrase Glavnoye Upravleniye Lagerej (Chief Administration of [Corrective Labor] Camps), a government agency created under Vladimir Lenin.

  * In Russian, the word vor is singular for “thief.” Vory is plural.

  * According to a 2016 report of Project Millennium citing Interpol Moscow, 1,086 “thieves-in-law” were registered in the files of Interpol Moscow’s office. Other sources say there were six to seven hundred registered thieves-in-law.

  * According to Benjamin Nayfeld, the victim had allegedly insulted Benjamin’s girlfriend and reached for a weapon. Eighteen witnesses backed up Benjamin’s version of events, insisting the stabbing was a justifiable homicide, and the case was dropped.

  * After Gorbachev posed for a photo with Balagula and his wife, Balagula boasted that Gorbachev was on the take from him—a claim that seems highly unlikely.

  * The Cambridge Spy Ring has been featured, fictionally and otherwise, in countless books, movies, and plays about espionage, including John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and A Perfect Spy; Frederick Forsyth’s The Fourth Protocol; The Innocent by Ian McEwan; Blunt: The Fourth Man with Anthony Hopkins and Ian Richardson; the BBC series The Hour; The Jigsaw Man with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine; three plays by Alan Bennett, A Question of Attribution, An Englishman Abroad, and The Old Country; and many others.

  * Slusovice is the name of the Zelníček family’s village.

  * As it happens, Kryuchkov also had a spy in the KGB’s Dresden station reporting to him—Vladimir Putin.

  * A few months later, Dubinin was transferred from his post at the UN and was appointed Soviet ambassador to the United States.

  * The Riviera in Las Vegas disputes the Taj Mahal’s claim that it is the largest in the world.

  * Some of Trump’s acquaintances who were close to individuals associated with the New Jersey Mafia proved to be valuable allies in the future. Don McGahn, the nephew of both Paddy and Joseph McGahn, later became a White House counsel in the Trump administration. In addition, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, who also served as Trump’s campaign manager, is the granddaughter of Jimmy “the Brute” DiNatale, an associate of Little Nicky Scarfo.

  * Testa was shot to death in 1984 just weeks after a fight with mob boss Nicky Scarfo, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. As for Narducci, he was sentenced to life in prison in 1989 for his role in a mob murder.

  * Executive Intelligence Review is a weekly newsmagazine founded by Lyndon LaRouche, a cultlike political activist who has run
for president eight times. The magazine has promoted a number of unlikely conspiracy theories, including one asserting that Queen Elizabeth II runs an international drug cartel and that the British royal family ordered the assassination of Diana, Princess of Wales.

  * The Iowa caucuses precede the New Hampshire primary, but they consist of precinct caucuses to select candidates, not statewide elections.

  * When I asked to interview Mogilevich, his attorney Ze’ev Gordon told me, “He doesn’t want to give an interview . . . He has nothing to do with President Trump and he doesn’t know anybody who has business with him . . . The last time he was in the United States was more than twenty years ago.”

  * According to FBI files, Interpol’s Millennium Project, and other sources, Mogilevich’s name has appeared in many different forms, either as an alias or as an alternative spelling. Among them: Semion Mobllerltsh, Seva Magelansky, Sergei Schneider, Seva Moguilevich, Semon Yudkovich Palagnyuk, Semen Yukovich Telesh, Simeon Mogilevitch, Semjon Mogilevcs, Shimon Makelwitsh, Shimon Makhelwitsch, Sergei Yurevich, Seva Schnaider, Mogiletin Senior Mogilevich, Semion Mogeilegtin, Semion Mogleritis, Semion Mogrilets, Sergei Magrilets, Semyon Teles, Sergei Palagniuk, Semyon Palagniuk, Shimon Makelvitsh, Shimon Makelvich, Seymon Mogilevsk, Lev Fisherman, Simeon Teles, Semyon Yudkovich, Sergei Mangriyats, Sergei Yuryevich Schneider, Moguilevich, Mogilevitch, and many others.

  * Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982; Yuri Andropov in 1984; and Konstantin Chernenko in 1985.

  * Israel’s Law of Return gives Jews the right to come and live in Israel and to gain Israeli citizenship. In 1970, the right of entry and settlement was extended to people with one Jewish grandparent and a person who is married to a Jew, whether or not he or she is considered Jewish under Orthodox interpretations of Halakha.

  * In an interview with Moskovsky Komsomolets, Mogilevich explained, “In the eyes of the FBI, any disco that contains Russians is a brothel.”

  * Maxim, SV Holding, Emire Bond in Israel, Arigon, Magnex in Hungary, MAB International in Belgium, YBM Magnex in the US, and Benex.

  * Sambo is a Soviet martial art that was created by Red Army officers in the 1920s. The word “sambo” is derived from an anagram of a Russian phrase for “self-defense without weapons.”

  * Usvyatsov’s prison record didn’t seem to interfere with mentoring Putin, as Usvyatsov is sometimes credited with helping the future president win admittance to the law school of Leningrad State University, a considerable feat, if true, given Putin’s lackluster academic record. The suggestion that Usvyatsov helped Putin get into college has been written about in various blogs in Russia, but Putin gives a somewhat different version in First Person. (See https://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/stream/2712.)

  * In the wake of the 2014 Crimean crisis, President Barack Obama blacklisted the Rotenberg brothers, among other friends of Putin.

  * Putin attended what is now known as the Academy of Foreign Intelligence or the SVR Academy, and was previously known as the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute or Red Banner Institute, one of the primary espionage academies of Russia, and, before that, the Soviet Union, serving the KGB and its successor organization, the Foreign Intelligence Service or Foreign Security Service. Known as the Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii in Russian, it is most frequently referred to in English as the FSB. But the historic power of the KGB is such that it is often referred to by those initials as well.

  * With its two-cylinder engine and plastic body, the Trabant was referred to as “a spark plug with a roof” and came to symbolize the demise of the Eastern Bloc.

  * In First Person, Putin disputes Kalugin’s account, saying, “[Kalugin] doesn’t remember a thing. He couldn’t remember me. I had no contact with him, nor did I meet him. It is I who remembers him, because he was a big boss and everybody knew him.”

  “Kalugin is a traitor,” Putin added. “I saw Kalugin during my time in Leningrad when he was deputy head of the Directorate. He was an absolute loafer.”

  * Leningrad changed its name back to St. Petersburg in 1991.

  * Kumarin is serving a fourteen-year sentence for money laundering and organizing the illegal takeover of companies in St. Petersburg.

  * A Liechtenstein court found two men associated with SPAG, Rudolf Ritter and Eugen von Hoffen, guilty of fraud, but acquitted them on charges that they laundered money for the Cali cartel. The presiding judge, however, added that some suspicions remained.

  * Lubyanka, of course, is the home of the KGB/FSB, and the title is meant to suggest that agents such as Putin were in fact nothing more than gangsters.

  * Medvedev became president of Russia in 2008 after having served as Putin’s chief of staff and then as first deputy prime minister. When Putin retook the presidency in 2012, Medvedev became prime minister.

  * At the time, Medvedev was a consultant to the city hall’s External Affairs Committee, which was headed by Putin. In November 1993, Medvedev became the legal affairs director of Ilim Pulp Enterprise, Russia’s largest lumber company, with annual revenues of $500 million. According to Daniel Treisman’s The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev, Medvedev actually received 20 percent of the company’s stock—not 10 percent.

  * In 1996, then-director of the CIA John Deutch called Nordex, a Vienna-based multinational company, “an example of an organization associated with Russian criminal activity moving out of Russia.”

  * PGU is the First Chief Directorate of the KGB/SVR, which is responsible for overseeing all aspects of acquiring and managing foreign intelligence.

  * Through Inkombank, Mogilevich separately acquired a substantial interest in Sukhoi, a large manufacturer of Russia’s military aircraft.

  * Immediately after reading Roffman’s analysis of the Taj Mahal, Trump had sent a letter to Janney Montgomery Scott, the investment firm that employed Roffman, and demanded that Roffman issue a public retraction of his assessment of the Taj, or, in the absence of such a retraction, that Janney fire Roffman.

  * Though relatively low-profile among Trump’s associates, Lorber was an important figure in the Trump administration in that he introduced Trump to David Friedman, who became Trump’s ambassador to Israel. In addition, Friedman’s former partner Marc Kasowitz became Trump’s lawyer.

  * In 2000, the Brooke Group was renamed the Vector Group.

  * Even though Rabinovich says he was jailed on trumped-up charges, the US has barred his entry into this country. “You will find accusations against me in the U.S.,” Rabinovich told the Forward. “In Israel, some say I am connected to the mafia. In Ukraine, they say I am Mossad agent, if you find this kind of nonsense interesting. I don’t.”

  * More specifically, Baturina’s brother-in-law, Vladimir Yevtushenko, was head of Sistema.

  * In January 2016, Pribylovsky, a prolific Putin critic, was found dead in his Moscow apartment at the age of fifty-nine. The cause of death was unclear. His colleague Yuri Felshtinsky also cowrote Blowing Up Russia with Alexander Litvinenko, who died of polonium poisoning in London in 2006.

  * According to a RICO indictment drawn up by the Eastern District of the State of New York against Fisherman, Jacob Bogatin, Anatoly Tsoura, and Semion Mogilevich, Fisherman served as chief operating officer of YBM and was on its board of directors. He was also president of Arigon, a YBM subsidiary in which Mogilevich was a principal.

  * At various times, Chernoy has been transliterated as Chorny, Chornoi, Chorney, and Chornoy, among other spellings.

  * Malevsky died in November 2001 as a result of a parachute accident in South Africa. According to Interpol documents, “it is rumored that Malevsky was actually thrown out of a plane on the orders of Mikhailov.”

  * According to a report by the Israeli website Ynetnews, forty-eight out of the two hundred richest people in Russia are Jewish. In some ways, however, the disproportionate wealth of a few dozen Jewish oligarchs can be seen as the unintended consequence of anti-Semitic Soviet policies that gave all the best career slots to
ethnic Slavs and forced Jews into the black market. That meant when communism collapsed and free-market capitalism replaced the black market, Jewish entrepreneurs had a head start.

  * In 2005, on a visit to Tel Aviv, Putin dropped by the home of Mina Yuditskaya Berliner, who had taught him German in high school some forty years earlier, and before he left, gave her a new apartment in Tel Aviv. Two of his judo sparring partners, the brothers Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, fared even better—much better. They ended up being worth about $2 billion each, thanks, in part, to $5.5 billion in construction contracts awarded to them by Putin for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.