FBI raids offices of Jewish philanthropists implicated in Ukrainian money-laundering scheme
Mordechai Korf and Uriel Tzvi Laber
By Molly Boigon August 4, 2020
The FBI raided real estate offices associated with two prominent Jewish philanthropists Tuesday morning, likely in connection to a money-laundering scheme out of Ukraine that was the subject of a Forward investigation earlier this year.
The FBI searched the Cleveland and Miami offices of Optima Management Group, said Special Agent Vicki Anderson-Gregg at the FBI’s office in Cleveland. Optima is a conglomerate of companies operated in part by Chabad donors Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber, who were named in a 2019 lawsuit that accused them of helping oligarchs launder money from a Ukrainian bank.
Korf and Laber owned and managed shell entities in the United States and bought other businesses using laundered money, the lawsuit says.
Anderson-Gregg declined to provide additional details about the raid, saying “everything is under seal,” but clarified that no one was taken into custody.
Korf and Laber owned shares in an overseas unit of a Ukrainian bank, PrivatBank. The bank “was subjected to a large, coordinated money-laundering scheme and bank fraud” to benefit its shareholders’ and their affiliates’ “business and personal interests,” according to a 2018 report by a Ukranian government entity.
The Daily Beast reported last spring that a Ukranian oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky, was being investigated by the FBI, in part for his role in the PrivatBank scheme, but this is the first action that confirms their report.
Cleveland.com reported that federal agents were seen carrying computers, boxes and other items out of the office at One Cleveland Center. The Miami office is located on South Biscayne Boulevard.
Molly Boigon is an investigative reporter at the Forward. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @MollyBoigon.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
