By Kelly Crow
The Wall Street Journal
July 30, 2020 Anno Domini

Two months after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian construction bil- lionaires Arkady and Boris Rotenberg in March 2014, the brothers sent their art adviser on a shopping spree, according to a Senate investigation report released Wednesday. At a Sotheby’s auction that month in New York, the Rotenbergs, who are life-long friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, paid $6.8 million for 10 works of art, including a cubist still life by Georges Braque and a swirling tableau by Marc Chagall, the report said.

Days later, the Rotenbergs again added to their collection, paying a private U.S. dealer $7.5 million for “Chest,” René Magritte’s 1961 painting of a colorful pile of buildings, according to the report. When Senate investigators later asked the art dealer if she had vetted the buyers’ identities to make sure they weren’t blacklisted, she said she never asked. When it comes to due diligence, the report said, “She relies on her gut.”

Who is buying art these days? Such disclosure details in art deals like these are being scrutinized following a two-year investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which alleges art is increasingly being used as a tool by blacklisted individuals to evade sanctions. The report directed sharp criticism at auction houses and art dealers for doing little to screen or stop sanctioned people from trading art in the U.S.

Companies based in the U.S. are forbidden by law from having any financial dealings with sanctioned individuals. Americans caught transacting with the Rotenbergs or any sanctioned individual can face steep fines or even jail terms. The seller of a painting isn’t required to ask or know the identity of the buyer to close a deal, though, because blue-chip art isn’t subject to the same anti-money-laundering disclosure laws that govern U.S. banks.

The art world has installed its own disclosure protocols, but has long struggled to enforce them. Collectors prize discretion and don’t always want their identities or income sources shared. Dealers likewise tend to be tight-lipped about their major clients, and no one wants to cede business to rivals willing to ask less and sell more. This helps explain why so many catalogs brim with works whose only ownership clue is “private collection.”

“I know the auction houses and dealers don’t always want to know who they’re selling to because they’re making significant money, but we also have a national-security interest in making sure sanctions work,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) who led the bipartisan report with Tom Carper (D., Del.). “Secrecy is the problem,” Sen. Portman added.

Even after meeting with Senate investigators in 2018, Sotheby’s and Christie’s competed last year for the chance to auction Lyonel Feininger’s “Bridge II,” a painting investigators said the Rotenbergs likely owned. Christie’s said later it didn’t know the work’s true seller at the time. When Sotheby’s won the consignment, it asked the Rotenbergs’ alleged adviser for the work’s owner and was told it belonged to a Marshall Islands company. The house gave the painting a $5 million estimate and included it in its February 2019 London sale. Just before the auction, the house pulled the work; Sotheby’s told investigators the work hadn’t elicited any potential bidders.

Altogether, the report alleges the Rotenbergs used U.S. dollars to spend or move around funds totaling $91 million, including $18.4 million in art and antiques, since sanctions were imposed.

Sen. Portman said he and Sen. Carper launched the investigation two years ago to research the efficacy of U.S. sanctions imposed on members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle in March 2014, weeks after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and launched a covert military operation in eastern Ukraine.

Arkaday Rotenberg, a St. Petersberg native and industrialist who befriended Mr. Putin when they joined the same judo club as children, was among those sanctioned. His brother Boris was added shortly thereafter. But after more sanctions were imposed on a wider circle of Russian oligarchs in 2018, Sen. Portman said he and other legislators “wanted to figure out why the sanctions didn’t appear to be working.”

Senate investigators who briefed The Wall Street Journal on the report’s findings said they started looking broadly at blacklisted Russians but soon focused on Arkady Rotenberg’s art-collecting activity. Eventually, they expanded their investigation to art bought by his brother and son, Igor, who is also sanctioned. Investigators said the family offers a case study in how some blacklisted Russians are using the opaque art market to circumvent financial restrictions.

Christie’s, Sotheby’s and the smaller London houses, Phillips and Bonhams, are all named in the report for doing business with the Rotenbergs. Spokespeople for each said they had zero tolerance for evasion of sanctions and were willing to work with the U.S. govern- ment on this issue. The houses also said they didn’t know the Rotenbergs were bidding through an alleged art adviser, Gregory Baltser, until investigators informed them of the connection. All said they stopped allowing him to bid after Senate investigators came asking questions.

“I was shocked when I found out,” Phillips’ Chief Executive Edward Dolman said.

Mr. Baltser, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Russia, confirmed that his company, Baltzer LLP (the misspelling is intentional), has aided Russian collectors in the past but through his lawyer denied that he ever bid on behalf of the Rotenbergs. His lawyer, in a statement, said the investigation has “done substantial collateral damage to Baltzer and its employees, and has forced Baltzer to largely suspend operations.”

A representative for the Rotenbergs called the Senate allegations “totally absurd” and said they never used any tools, including art, to launder money or circumvent sanctions. “All transactions with works of art made by Rotenberg family members or on their behalf were made openly, strictly with lawful personal purposes and always on market terms,” the statement said.

In 2018, the European Union amended its anti-money-laundering regulations to require businesses to verify the identities of sellers and buyers of art valued over €10,000.

The Senate report recommended ways to alter U.S. laws to compel more disclosure in art sales, but so far two bills that could potentially address the issue are stalled.

Arkady Rotenberg, now 68 years old, built a nearly $3 billion fortune, according to Forbes, overseeing infrastructure companies. His brother Boris and son have made fortunes in industries like energy and real estate.

Until now, little was known about the composition or extent of the Rotenberg collection. The brothers have been seen at judo and ice hockey matches in Russia but seldom attend gallery dinners or make buzzy purchases. The report alleged that for at least a decade the brothers have been collecting modern art, particularly surrealists like Salvador Dalí and Giorgio de Chirico.

Unlike the Rotenbergs, Mr. Baltser appeared to seek the art spotlight, opening a Moscow hangout called the Baltzer Club where he invited Russia’s newly wealthy art lovers to watch global auctions and bid, ideally through him. His website offered to help collectors bid with “anonymity,” according to the report.

Investigators tracked payments in Russia to a company incorporated in Belize called Steamort that sent $9,500 monthly payments to Mr. Baltser for years, surpassing $1.1 million. The report said it couldn’t name the owner of this account. Mr. Baltser confirmed he had been paid by the account but said his contract forbade him from disclosing its clients’ identities.

In January, Mr. Baltser wrote a column for Forbes Russia where he said the art market should prepare to divulge more ownership details in art deals. “I would call these changes revolutionary,” he wrote.

By M. Raphael Johnson, PH.D.

On April 28, 2002, a military helicopter went down in the southern part of the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia. On board was a major Russian dignitary, Gen. Alexander Lebed, governor of the region. Lebed was pronounced dead at the scene.

Almost immediately, the international press blamed “heavy fog” for the incident. However, at the time, every member of the Russian military was convinced the death of Lebed was no accident, but rather another hit by the international Jewish mafia, an organization that had long since taken control over much of Russia’s economy. Lebed, likely the most popular man in Russia at the time, was going to build a national socialist empire—possibly with Chinese assistance—based on the massive oil and mineral wealth of the region.

Had he succeeded, world history could have changed, and the 21st century would look very different. Prior to that, dozens of anti-Zionists in Russia had been murdered by car bombs or other devices, while none of the cases was ever solved. Only a handful was even investigated.

The very fact that the Jewish mafia (often misnamed the “Russian” mafia) was capable of completely covering its tracks, being completely left out of all news reports surrounding the incident, while the common people (in Russia) were utterly convinced of their complicity, proves the immense strength of this rather new movement of organized crime. The Jewish mafia is nothing like their Irish or Italian predecessors in its American or European operations.
They are richer, more international in scope and far more violent and ruthless. They kill children. They kill policemen and their families. They kill whomever they like. There has been nothing like it before in the history of the globe. And they are just getting started.

The major figure in uncovering the web of secrecy that surrounds the Jewish mafia was a journalist named Robert I. Friedman, who died at an early age from a “tropical disease.” He has interviewed the major figures in this underground and has uncovered their hiding spots and plans. After his book on the subject was published, major mafia leaders put a bounty on his head. The “Russian” mafia knows that it can kill with impunity, and, given their cozy relationship with European and American intelligence agencies, their immunity from real prosecution will only get more pronounced.

Friedman’s work is breathtaking in scope, and this essay will cite him extensively, especially his book Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America. Friedman is not afraid to state the obvious, namely, that the entire “Russian” mafia is Jewish, without exception, and that they have used this as a shield to deflect criticism. This shield has permitted them to grow and prosper. Further, Friedman is also not afraid to admit that Jewish organizations throughout the world, led by the Anti-Defamation League, are the beneficiaries of largesse coming from organized crime, and that the organizations in question are aware of it. In other words, Jewish organized crime is considered an acceptable part of Jewish life, and that Jewish organizations have actually lobbied law enforcement to stop investigations into this phenomenon, almost always with success. The confirmation of Zionist Michael Chertoff to the post as chief of Homeland Security guarantees that Jewish organized crime in America will not be at the receiving end of the many stings that have targeted the Italian Mafia.

The roots of Jewish organized crime, it is said, go far back into tsarist times. Organized crime syndicates assisted Lenin’s gangs in bank robberies and the creation of general mayhem. During the so-called revolution, it was difficult, sometimes impossible, to distinguish between Bolshevik ideologues and Jewish organized crime syndicates. They acted in nearly an identical manner.

However, in more modern times, they seem to have had their roots in the waning days of the stagnant USSR under Leonid Brezhnev. By the late 1970s, the Russian economy was driven by the black market, and the early stages of the Jewish mafia were involved in this black underground. In fact, the Russian socialist economy would have collapsed much sooner if it had not been propped up by the extensive black economy. Soon, the rulers of the black market became so powerful they were able to form their own “people’s courts,” which dispensed “justice” completely apart from the Soviet state, and away from its control. Many of these black marketeers had been recently released from the gulag system of prison camps in an earlier era for their black market activities, and the toughness that was required to survive these dungeons served this new criminal elite very well (Friedman, 9).

The black market acted as a safety valve for the Soviet state for decades, making all estimations of the strength of the Soviet economy subject to speculation. The black market provided many goods and services the overextended Soviet system could not provide. In the gulag, they had formed brotherhoods, much like blacks and Hispanics currently do today in prison. They formed Jewish bunds that, upon release, served to create deep bonds that exist today, maintaining a highly secretive organization almost impossible to deal with or penetrate.

Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s famous bill, the Jackson-Vanick law, linked Soviet trade privileges to the treatment of Soviet Jews. It was a bill lobbied heavily for by American Jewish organizations. And while non-Jews could not emigrate from Russia, Jews could. Quickly, the KGB took this opportunity to dump its hardcore criminals into the United States, many who were Jewish, as conservatives cheered, believing, naively as usual, to have scored a major victory against the USSR. Much of the Jewish mafia’s penetration into the United States came as a result of these Soviet “boatlifts,” which were partially financed by groups such as the ADL or the Hebrew Aid Society. Given the substantial nature of the black market and the Soviet criminal underground, and its exclusively Jewish character, it is difficult to believe that the Jewish groups who were financing the immigration of Russian Jews to America were unaware of the connections of many of the new arrivals. Regardless, much of the money earmarked for immigration to Israel was pocketed by the mafia and redirected to settling Jews in New York—the New Promised Land.

Marat Balagula was one of these. A major Jewish crime figure, he bought a restaurant in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, named it the Odessa (a major port city in Ukraine), and quickly converted it into a central recruiting base for mobsters. It was also closely linked with Zionist agencies in the area, including the women’s group Hadassah, who used the establishment for meetings and fund raising dinners (Friedman, 17). This restaurant also became the seat of real political power in Brooklyn, for in the upstairs part of the establishment, Balagula and other Jewish mobsters would convene the “People’s Courts,” and their word was (and is) law. Ordinary courts in the area could not hope to compete with the mobsters, well protected by powerful Jewish groups within the city and the municipal government itself.

These courts, controlled by the Jewish mob, were more powerful and acted more quickly than the regular municipal courts of New York City. Balagula had created a state within a state. The Italian gangs in New York didn’t know what hit them. Public executions and torturings were common in Brooklyn, and in broad daylight. Often, public murders would happen for the tiniest offenses, or to prove one’s toughness. While the Italians were very cautious and deliberate, the Jewish mob was flamboyant and gratuitously violent.

Yuri Brokhin, another Jewish mobster who had already made a name for himself in America, and Balagula were heavily into stealing diamonds from jewelry stores and replacing them with cheap fakes. At one incident, narrated by Friedman, the pair pulled such a scam in Chicago, and was caught at the airport with $175,000. As it turns out, the duo was seen by a Jewish security guard in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport wearing their phony Hassidic garb on the eve of Yom Kippur, when Jews are strictly forbidden to travel. This sloppiness got them caught. The duo was convicted, but as proof of the power of the Jewish mafia, they both got off without a jail sentence, having committed major grand larceny, among other crimes. Of course, Friedman does not speculate as to why this would be, since a major felony such as this often carried sentences over 20 years. Both Brokhin and Balagula were criminals in the USSR, and were able to transfer their wealth to America via Zionist and “charitable” organizations of Jewry.

A major connection between the halls of American political power and the Jewish mafia is the rabbi Ronald Greenwald. He knowingly did business with con artists and mafia figures, and used his major political connections to shield them. Greenwald was a major player in CREEP, the re-election campaign for Richard Nixon in 1972.
Greenwald was used heavily by Nixon and other Republicans to gain the Jewish vote, which he doubled for Nixon during that election (Friedman, 31) in the state of New York. Soon, the rabbi was given a post as an “advisor” to Nixon on “Jewish poverty programs,” a post which certainly made some snicker at the time, though it was clear that Nixon owed Greenwald, and the rabbi made quick use of his new-found powers. He used his power to protect the mafia’s bilking of Medicaid programs and other crimes that were never investigated by the authorities.
His post as head of the “Jewish poverty” initiative permitted him to shield those involved with such financial scams, as well as call off any and all FBI investigations of his friends. Part of the rise of Jewish mafia groups was the protection afforded it by Greenwald’s political connections.

Greenwald was also instrumental in protecting Marc Rich, a billionaire Jewish investor with mob ties. Rich, a major player in the Clinton administration, swindled investors out of billions. Nothing was done, again, though negative media treatment against Rich was permitted largely because he did do business with Iran, and thus was considered a traitor by his fellow Jews. Eventually, Clinton pardoned Rich in a much-publicized case, and Rich is now free.

Jewish mafia investors all but took over Las Vegas, also with the political protection and patronage of Greenwald. Some years back, a movie was released called Casino, starring Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci. Concerning itself with the takeover of Las Vegas, the film depicted Mr. Rothstein (played by the Jewish DeNiro) as the suave and successful entrepreneur, and Pesci as the typical Italian wiseguy, brash and insolent. Of course, the purpose of the movie was to absolve Jewish organized crime and transfer all blame to Italian mobsters. The opposite was true.

Balagula, before taking over Jewish mafia interests in the United States, acted as a mob functionary for the KGB. In his very own words, Balagula said that the “KGB gave him visas, no problem” (Friedman, 44) and was instrumental in sending him stolen art and jewels, which he sold to foreign tourists. The KGB also set him up as head of the largest food co-op in Ukraine, a position he quickly turned into a major black market operation with the blessings of the KGB. Near the end of the Cold War, members of the KGB viewed the Jewish crime syndicate as a source of possible new jobs for them after the old system was destroyed. So, not only did they have the patronage of the American political establishment under Greenwald, but also the decaying intelligence apparatus of the USSR as well.

BOOTLEGGING
What needs to be kept in mind about the bootlegging operation is that it was never small time. Nothing the Jewish mob did was ever small. This operation was multinational in scope. They had a fleet of massive oil tankers, tanker trucks and hundreds of gasoline stations and distributorships, all owned by Jews loyal to the mob. Balagula had created a massive mafia empire leading from North Africa to Saudi Arabia to Venezuela to Brooklyn. The Jewish mobsters developed an infrastructure within the oil trade that made them invincible. Mafia influence is substantial in the price of oil, as well as acting as the occasional go-between between the Mossad and Arab oil-producing sheikdoms. No one of substance was ever brought to justice.

With all the power that the Jewish mob has amassed, they are merely a pimple on the back of the master of them all, and a man who truly controls much of the globe. There is no one on Earth more powerful than he, and, as per usual, he remains unknown, left out of all press and television reports on the subject. The CIA considers him a “grave threat” to global security and the “world’s most dangerous man” (Friedman). The fact that he remains almost unknown shows the power of the Zionist-controlled media and their relentless drive to suppress all investigation into Jewish crime. He has created a massive, global communications network and employs hundreds of Ph.D.s in computer science, physics and economics to run his massive financial empire. He has penetrated every stock exchange in the world and controls much of the trading therein.

He was also the mastermind of the largest money-laundering scheme in U.S. history, “washing” $7 billion through the Bank of New York, which is a major branch of the Federal Reserve and his bank of choice. His name is Semion Mogilevich, born in 1946.

Basing his first operations in Israel, where he fleeced Jewish refugees from Russia, Mogilevich acquired Hungarian citizenship after making the comment that the biggest problem with Israel is that there are “too many Jews there.” However, he single-handedly controls the brothels in Israel, where Ukrainian and Russian girls are forced into sexual slavery. This is legal in Israel if the girls are non-Jews. The name of Mogilevich has been left out of every report on the phenomenon in Israel, Ukraine or the United States.

Mogilevich also controls the vodka trade in Russia and Central Europe.

Most ominously, Mogilevich has bought Hungary’s armaments industry. In other words, he controls the military equipment being manufactured in Hungary. He has his own army, artillery, mechanized infantry, antiaircraft guns and missiles of all types. NATO has said that he is a “threat to the stability of Europe,” though his name remains little known. This mobster is militarily more powerful than many European countries. He has nuclear weapons from the former Warsaw Pact countries and is presently trading with various governments and providing them with nuclear technology. He has agents in the intelligence agencies of all European countries, which means that he may never be prosecuted, for he is made aware of any pending investigation into his activities, which quickly gets quashed.

German television reported that the German intelligence service, the BND, had entered into secret negotiations with Mogilevich whereby the latter would supply information on his rivals in Russia. He has a similar arrangement with French intelligence. He has close connections to the Mossad, which destroyed his criminal file (Friedman, 245-247). Therefore he is immune to prosecution and travels freely. He controls the black market from Central Europe to Russia. He has a Rockefeller connection as well, as his main economics advisor, Igor Fisherman was a consultant to Chase Manhattan Bank. Friedman writes, concerning the Fed and its relations to Mogilevich: “While the bank has not been charged with any wrongdoing, some investigators believe that the money laundering could not have taken place unless senior bank officials were bought off or otherwise involved” (259). When the Justice Department began a criminal investigation into Mogilevich (which went nowhere), he accused the Department of an “anti-Semitic conspiracy.”

George W. Bush’s professed mentor, Natan Sharansky, has long and deep ties to organized crime. The Congress, State Department and the CIA all have lengthy dossiers on Sharansky, who acted as a bridge between the Republican Party and Jewish thugs in a similar manner to Rabbi Greenwald. Sharansky, knowing his power, simply refused to sever his ties with organized crime, infusing the Jewish mafia into the highest echelons of the Bush administration. A pattern emerges in relation to the Republican Party: Russian Jews usually pose as “anti-Communists.” They did this partially because they had been arrested by security services for their black market activities, but also because this posture would make them valuable to Republican operatives and the Beltway “conservative movement.” Their reputations as “dissidents” protected them almost as much as their religion.

Because of this, George W.’s father also refused to cooperate with several investigations into Russian mob activities in Switzerland. The CIA has commented that there is no “major Russian mob figure that does not carry an Israeli passport,” but the Israeli state refuses to take any action against the gangsters. Yitzhak Rabin was the one exception, and met with Mossad figures, as well as Shin Bet and Israel’s FBI, to combat organized crime, believing that it could destabilize Israel. Within a few days, he was murdered. His successor, Shimon Peres, shelved the recommendations formulated under Rabin, where they collect dust to this day.

CAUSES
It might be worthwhile to delve into some of the causes of this phenomenon. Why the Jews? It is true that many culture groups have engaged in ethnic based organized crime, but it seems only the Italians get frequently mentioned. Today, Chechen, Hispanic and Albanian gangs are growing in power, but none has come close to being even a footnote to the Jewish clans. Few people in the FBI, CIA or DEA speak Hebrew or Yiddish. Some Jewish mobsters go back and forth between languages, including Russian, so as to make themselves more indecipherable.

The power of the Jewish gangs is wielded more ruthlessly than any other criminal gang. Jewish mobsters enjoy inflicting pain, they murder children as well as unarmed men and women. The old code of honor among Irish and Italian gangsters is nonexistent. These old-time mobsters would only kill another mobster. The Jewish gangs have no regard for these rules, and thus are more feared. The sheer arrogance of the Jewish gangsters and their outrageous self-assurance have allowed their “competition” among the Italian gangs to take a very cautious stance toward their Jewish counterparts.

The state of Israel is a major factor in the rise and power of the Jewish mafia. Jewish drug dealers, child porn pushers, and slave traders are free from prosecution in Israel. Israel does not consider these to be crimes, again, so long as the victims are non-Jews. The mafia proved its power in the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. The Israeli state will not extradite its citizens to non-Jewish countries, and, therefore, Jewish murderers can quite easily escape punishment in Israel.

The unique situation in the former USSR, and the fact that Jews predominated in the Soviet bureaucracy, provides another link in the rise of the mafia. Jews predominated in the earlier and more primitive black market in Russia, and thus these groups were physically more ready to take advantage of the crisis in Russia beginning in the mid-1980s.

Jewish organized crime, connected to both the KGB and Mossad, automatically had the skids greased to remain off the radar screen for allied intelligence agencies.

Likely the most important factor is the complete control of the media by Jewish families and the power of the ADL in American culture. The power of the Jews in America is so great that any serious investigation into Jewish crime will see shrill attacks from every major media outlet in America. In terms of public relations, it is just not worth it. Therefore, one will see a television program like The Sopranos about Italian mobsters, but one will never see the same program featuring Jewish mobsters.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?
There is very little that can be done at this time. There is every reason to believe that soon, nationalists and Revisionists will be targeted by Jewish criminals with strong ties to the Mossad. The fate of the West is being decided in Moscow, not in Washington, D.C. or New York. Russian President Vladimir Putin needs to continue to centralize power in his own person. His elimination of provincial governors was meant primarily as a crime fighting campaign, as local governors were making peace with the crime bosses. Putin also needs to continue to reform the military and security services, making them more and more loyal to the new Russian order. Putin should begin publicly drawing attention to the global power of the bosses and the connivance of western powers in their rise and present prosperity.

The ruble should be made non-convertible (so as to prevent its manipulation by crime bosses in the currency markets), and a strong Sino-Slavic trading bloc needs to be solidified. Police work in Russia is now a rough business. Poorly paid policemen need to be supplemented by local militias to begin direct and militant confrontations with organized crime and corruption wherever it might arise. Putin has the popularity and the power to create a major security bloc against organized crime, as well as capitalist imperialism. Russian banks need to come under state control, and be purged of all criminal elements. Furthermore, the church, currently the second most popular institution in Russia after Putin, needs to place its powerful seal on the development of a mob-free Russia, and call on all Russians to repent and begin building a nationalist and communitarian system. Agriculture and the village commune should receive government support to repopulate the countryside, making Russia self-sufficient in food.

And, of course, Russia’s extremely important and strategic oil and natural gas reserves need to be protected by interior ministry troops and placed under government control if need be. Putin, the nationalists and the church have tremendous popularity and influence. This capital should be spent on developing a nationalist system dedicated to purging Russia of Jewish-inspired crime, imperialism, depopulation, and liberalism. He is already moving in this direction, and Russian economic growth and a low inflation and unemployment rate are its fruits.

ENDNOTE:
This article is based chiefly on: Robert I. Friedman, Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America, 288 pages, hardcover, Little, Brown; May 1, 2000; mass market paperback publisher: Berkley Publishing Group (2002).
Other books of similar interest: Russian Mafia in America: Immigration, Culture, and Crime by James O. Finckenauer; Comrade Criminal: Russia’s New Mafiya, by Stephen Handelman; Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism by Paul Klebnikov; Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, by David Satter.