[9][44][47], The Financial Times, citing five sources with knowledge of the matter, reported that Sater had agreed to cooperate with investigators looking into an international money laundering scheme involving Viktor Khrapunov, a former government minister in Kazakhstan. Felix Henry Sater / setr / (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky; [4] [5] Russian: ; March 2, 1966) is a Russian-American mobster, convicted felon, [6] real estate developer and former managing director of Bayrock Group LLC, [7] a real estate conglomerate based out of New York City. In July, Mueller ordered a pre-dawn raid at Manaforts Virginia home seeking evidence in the case, amid speculation that Manafort might flip and turn against Trump.). tn_author: ['bob-d'], Sater and Al Qaeda 1998-? Felix Sater speaks at the Chabad of Port Washington in Port Washington, New York, in 2014. Felix Sater accumulates an excellent earning out of his profession as a real estate developer. Sater possibly did this because of Menez finding out about his past convictions and links to organized crime. Khrapunov, who now lives in Switzerland, has been accused by the Kazakhstani government of embezzling millions of dollars and is wanted by Interpol. Prosecutors say that Ray subjected Drury to a long night of torture, allegedly stripping her naked, handcuffing her to a chair, suffocating her with a plastic bag, and choking her with a leash. Last time I saw him was 28 years ago, Sater told Law&Crime in a direct message, referring to Ray. slotId: "thenation_right_rail_258356", 75,075, This story has been shared 57,237 times. In about the next 30 to 35 days, he told reporter Rice, I will be the most colorful character you have ever talked about. Jan 26. cta_2_check_258356 = true; (Screenshot from CBS New York) Have a tip we should know? var inline_cta_2_text_258356 = ''; } Felix Henry Sater /setr/ (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky;[4][5] Russian: ; March 2, 1966) is a Russian-American mobster, convicted felon,[6] real estate developer and former managing director of Bayrock Group LLC,[7] a real estate conglomerate based out of New York City. Trump Seeks Distance From 'Advisor' With Past Ties to Mafia", "The Donald Trump Story You're Not Hearing About", "Felix Sater: The Crook Behind the Trump-Russia 'Peace' Plan", "In Moscow Luxury-Tower Plan, Donald Trump Paired With Developer for Russia's Working Class", "Trump's Would-Be Moscow Partner Faces Homebuyers' Ire", "Felix Sater: The Trump SoHo and Other Projects", "A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates", "Russia can't rent Crimea from Russia, FM Lavrov says", "Felix Sater Is a Lean, Mean Trump-Russia Machine", "Who is Felix Sater? [33], Felix Sater was a managing director of Bayrock Group LLC, as well as a senior advisor to Donald Trump and The Trump Organization when construction of the Trump SoHo began in 2006. var is_user_logged_in = getCookie('SESSname'); After dating for a long time period, the couple exchanged their vows in a private marriage ceremony. [2][26] In January 2022, Sater claimed that the barfight victim had tried to decline pressing charges, but that the U.S. government kept pressing because they wanted cooperation from Sater's father. [45] Lynch's decision to seal his records, and the lack of any victim restitution, were discussed at her 2015 Congressional confirmation hearings to become attorney general;[46] she stated that Sater provided "information crucial to national security and the conviction of over 20 individuals, including those responsible for committing massive financial fraud and members of La Cosa Nostra. Sign up for our free daily newsletter, along with occasional offers for programs that support our journalism. Fisher MB LLC purchased a condo in Miami, Florida for $4.8 million. Furthermore, Felix is living a happy life along with his family and children. At a hearing last month, Drager scolded Felix for not yet having filed his 2018 taxes. tn_author: ['bob-d'], I'm not that familiar with him. As we previously mentioned, Felix Sater is a married man. A known bootlegger linked to bombings, corruption, torture and killings, Capone was famously brought down during prosecution on a more mundane crime: tax evasion, leading to convictions that put him away in Alcatraz for several years. Drager said this substantiates to the court that the defendant [Felix] does have financial resources contrary to his claims.. Presentation-Overview Dec 2021. Your email address will not be published. [email protected] Filed Under: + qs; In this piece, I draw on all of these sources and more. And, though Trump has denied that he has any business interests in Russia, even as he was gearing up for the Republican presidential primary race, Cohen and Sater were deep into previously undisclosed talks with Russian partners about constructing a Trump-branded hotel, according to The Washington Post. } According to the Times, Sater met Cohen and Artemenko at a New York hotel just two blocks from Cohens current residence in Trump Park Avenue. tn_pos: 'rectangle_4', Sater couldnt resist adding, Michael I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins [sic] private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin. According to the Times, Sater was eager to show video clips to his Russian contacts of instances of Mr. Trump speaking glowingly about Russia. Which, of course, Trump has done repeatedly over the years. Bob Dreyfuss, Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it, wrote Sater. According to recent reporting by the Times and the Post, however, as recently as 2015-16, Sater and Cohen, Trumps lawyer and the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, were working together on a Trump Tower Moscow arrangement, though that too didnt pan out. Other former Sarah Lawrence students accuse him of extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from them by extracting false confessions and blackmailing them with the records. 57,237, This story has been shared 28,331 times. magazine_button_bg_color_258356 = '#ffcf0d'; The ex-NYPD chief was convicted in part because of $165,000 in free renovations that he received from contractor Frank DiTommaso, a construction executive whose company Interstate allegedly had mob connections, according to the New York Times. [20], Felix Sater is reportedly a childhood friend of Michael Cohen. Other counts against Raysuch as sex trafficking, money laundering, and extortionare also commonly charged against criminal rackets. It does seem to me that the defendant has resources and is bringing in income and his spending habits, which Drager said may be less than they used to be, are still quite significant.. A federal judge in Brooklyn ordered on Monday the unsealing of previously secret portions of the court record involving the criminal case of Felix Sater, a former associate of President Donald. Paul Manafort, the GOP operative who would later sign on as Donald Trumps campaign manager, was on Yanukovychs payroll for years, and when Yanukovych fled Ukraine for Russia, Manafort contracted with opposition politicians in Kiev to help build an anti-Poroshenko blocand Artemenko joined in. This was a group of storytellers.. inline_cta_bg_color_258356 = '#ffcf0d'; Drager also ordered Felix to pay $100,000 of Viktorias legal fees and $15,000 for her medical bills. inline_cta_url_258356 = 'https://www.thenation.com/donate-website?utm_medium=website&utm_source=Website&utm_campaign=june-appeal&sourceid=1066666&ms=post-inline&utm_content=post-inline'; An unindicted co-conspirator in that indictment was Felix Sater, a former business associate of Donald Trump, who helped broker the never-realized plan to build a Trump Tower Moscow. if( is_user_logged_in != null ){ Felix Henry Sater (born Felix Mikhailovich Sheferovsky; 1 2 ru: ; By signing up to receive emails, you agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation's journalism. inline_cta_text_258356 = '
Readers like you make our independent journalism possible.
'; In 2015 emails Sater boasted to Cohen about his ties to Vladimir Putin and how Trump would win. Cohen grew up on Long Island as a doctor's son. A monthly newsletter on the global fight for reproductive freedom. He is perhaps most infamous for a 1991 bar fight gone . So that, the pair has not yet disclosed any information about their actual wedding date and venue. Every time someone asks Donald Trump if he knows Felix Sater, his Russian-born, Brooklyn-bred former business associate, Trump draws a blank. During his time in Moscow eastern Europe, Sater cultivated ties to arms dealers, officials in US law enforcement and national security agencies, and even meeting with the Russian military intelligence agency. The plan went nowhere, however. It all came crashing down in 1998, when New York City police uncovered a stash of guns and documents in a mini-storage locker in SoHo implicating Sater and his partners in the fraud and money-laundering schemes. Felix Sater. Amongst other things in 1991 he got into an . }, Sater, who served time in prison for that assault, was barred from financial trading by the National Association of Securities Dealers. @NewYorkerFest @adamdavidson @RuthMarcus @DavidBarstow @MichaelAvenatti pic.twitter.com/l5QBJSqNLA, Felix Sater (@felixsater) October 7, 2018. In December 2017, the Trump SoHo was renamed to The Dominick. The lawyer wrote that he believed Ray was a registered and documented informant for the FBI., Felix Sater, former business associate of U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives for testimony before the House Select Intelligence Committee July 9, 2019 in Washington, DC. Bob DreyfussBobDreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an independent investigative journalist who specializes in politics and national security. Despite that record, which came before he worked with Trump, Sater spent nearly a decade working with the Trump Organization in search of deals in Russia and other former Soviet republics. jQuery("#inline_cta_2_btn_258356 a input").css("background",inline_cta_2_bg_color_258356); } Larry mentioned many times that he was related to Al Capone, Rays alleged victim Felicia Rosario testified on Tuesday. He played a major role throughout the process of the building's construction, and remained managing director of Bayrock Group when the Trump SoHo project was completed in 2010. Multiple witnesses have testified that Ray and his daughter Talia compulsively talked about how they believed Kerik trying to exact elaborate payback for his cooperation. Cohen and Felix Sater have known each other for nearly 30 years. inline_cta_2_bg_color_258356 = '#cc0e0e'; cta_2_check_258356 = true; Moreover, Sater holds an American nationality and belongs to a Russian-American ethnicity. We've received your submission. Tim O'Brien, author of a biography of Trump, wrote about Sater in an article titled "Lean, Mean Trump-Russia Machine." He was born in 1966 in the Soviet . View our current issue Broke and with a young wife and child to support, Sater has said he hooked up with a boyhood friend who was operating a Mafia-linked brokerage firm. In so doing, for protection Sater drew on the assistance of his fathers friends in the Genovese crime family. cta_1_check_258356 = true; His reporting on the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell was featured on the Starz and Channel 4 documentary "Who Is Ghislaine Maxwell?" Click here to log inor subscribe. This story has been shared 75,075 times. { var cta_2_check_258356 = false; . He was at Iliyas' wedding party. Photo: Stephen Voss/Redux Felix Sater, real estate developer, former managing director of Bayrock Group, and one-time informant for the FBI, in Washington D.C., on May 5, 2018. He said that he helped hunt down Osama bin Laden and weaken mob-operated money laundering networks, according to news reporting and public records. [44] In 2009, he was sentenced to pay a $25,000 fine; he served no prison time and paid no restitution to his stock-fraud victims. Mikhail Sheferovsky (also known as Michael Sheferofsky) states that the family name was Saterov at some point (). For Reprints and Permissions, click here. You can read our Privacy Policy here. [8] BuzzFeed News reported on March 12, 2018, that Mueller's investigators had questioned Sater,[45] and on April 13, 2018, reported that a former Russian spy had helped secure financing for the project. Years before he became a key figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into links between Donald Trump and Russia, former Trump business associate Felix Sater really was a globetrotting secret agent who risked his life to help the U.S. government "combat terrorists and rogue states," according to a newly unsealed court document. Learn how your comment data is processed. if( cta_1_check_258356 ){ Though his supposed relation to Capone is unverified at best, Ray has documented ties to organized crime. inline_cta_2_text_258356 = 'Know someone who would like The Nation?
'; . I will manage this process." Felix Sater has been cast as a Russian mafioso, a career criminal, and a key business associate of President Donald Trump's but he spent more than two decades as an intelligence asset who helped the US government track terrorists and mobsters. According to Rices New York piece, Sater laundered fraud proceeds through a labyrinthine network of Caribbean shell companies, Israeli and Swiss bank accounts, and contacts in New Yorks Diamond District. In the mid-1990s, New York reports, Sater spent a great deal of time in Moscow, where, according to a friend and business partner, Sal Lauriawho later wrote a book about all of thisWe were dealing with ex-KGB generals and with the elite of Russian society.. s.src = p + "://api.content-ad.net/Scripts/widget2.aspx?" if( magazine_button_url_258356 !='' ){ Saters links to Trump in recent years are obscure. var inline_cta_2_button_text_258356 = ''; Portions of the information related to Italian and Russian mob operations and placed the safety of Mr. Ray and his family at risk.. inline_cta_2_bg_color_258356 = '#cc0e0e'; take a short look. However, Trump has distanced himself from Sater, stating that he barely knew him. Sater claimed, I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins [sic] private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin., Sater claimed, I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins [sic] private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin.. [11], Sater received multiple subpoenas to produce documents and be deposed in the case against Mukhtar Ablyazov who is alleged to have defrauded BTA Bank of up to $5 billion as chairman. magazine_button_bg_color_258356 = '#dd3333'; Good show Rachel. Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it, he wrote. [50][51], The Trump Organization pursued a luxury hotel and condominium project in Moscowdubbed the Trump Tower Moscowduring the Trump presidential campaign. Sater Regency Capital 1998; var inline_cta_bg_color_258356 = ''; var params = He was born into a Russian Jewish family as the son of Mikhail Sheferovsky and Rachel Sheferovskaya. Sater was convicted of first degree assault, and spent 15 months in minimum security Edgecombe Correctional Facility in New York City before being paroled. }, Sorting out Saters checkered past leads into a convoluted labyrinth of crime, legal entanglements, shady deals, alleged ties to US and foreign intelligence agencies and, of course, intimate connections to Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. To submit a correction for our consideration, click here. d: "YWxsc3RhcmJpby5jb20=", They met in Brighton Beach when Cohen started dating his future wife, Shusterman's daughter, Laura, who Sater says he knew.