Why No Tariff for Russia?

[Kid Berwyn]

10. The look of love?

Or the look of one who owes a lot of money for...everything.

The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World
In 1998 the Voice reported on the enigmatic leader of the Red Mafia — a shadowy figure known as the ''Brainy Don''

by Robert I. Friedman
The Village Voice, May 26, 1998

Excerpt...

The enigmatic leader of the Red Mafia is a 52-year-old Ukrainian-born Jew named Semion Mogilevich. He is a shadowy figure known as the “Brainy Don” — he holds an economics degree from the University of Lvov — and until now, he has never been exposed by the media. But the Voice has obtained hundreds of pages of classified FBI and Israeli intelligence documents from August 1996, and these documents — as well as recent interviews with a key criminal associate and with dozens of law enforcement sources here and abroad — describe him as someone who has become a grave threat to the stability of Israel and Eastern Europe.

“He’s the most powerful mobster in the world,” crows Monya Elson, who is listed in classified documents as one of Mogilevich’s closest associates and partners in prostitution and money laundering rings. The Brighton Beach­based Elson, who once led a pack of thugs and killers known as Monya’s Brigada, is currently in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan awaiting trial for three murders and numerous extortions.

In July 1993, after Elson was grievously wounded by rival mobsters in a bloody shoot-out outside his Brooklyn apartment building, Mogilevich spirited him out of the country. Mogilevich then set up his Russian Jewish refugee friend in an alleged massive money-laundering scheme in Fano, Italy, where he was eventually arrested and extradited back to America. Elson, an integral part of the Red Mafia, had been one of the most feared mobsters in Brighton Beach, ground zero for Russian organized crime in America, which has exploded here following perestroika.

“If I tell on Mogilevich, Interpol will give me $20 million,” boasted Elson. “I lived with him. I’m his partner, don’t forget. We are very, very close friends. I don’t mean close, I mean very, very close. He’s my best friend.” Nevertheless, after extensive interviews over the course of the last six months, Elson ultimately confirmed some of the details about Mogilevich contained in the classified FBI and Israeli documents.

Allegations of Mogilevich’s devilish array of criminal activities are extensively detailed in the reports: The FBI and Israeli intelligence assert that he traffics in nuclear materials, drugs, prostitutes, precious gems, and stolen art. His contract hit squads operate in the U.S. and Europe. He controls everything that goes in and out of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, a “smugglers’ paradise,” says Elson. Mogilevich bought a bankrupt airline in a former Central Asian Soviet republic for millions of dollars in cash so he could haul heroin out of the Golden Triangle. Most worrisome to U.S. authorities is Mogilevich’s apparently legal purchase of virtually the entire Hungarian armaments industry, jeopardizing regional security, NATO, and the war against terrorism.

Continues...

https://www.villagevoice.com/the-most-dangerous-mobster-in-the-world/

I know it's ole news to you, Blue Owl. For those new to the subject, Mogilevich and Associates are the guys Putin, his oligarchs and Agent Dimdonnie Krasnov report to.