The BBC published the results of its long awaited investigation into London property holdings of a prominent Odessa based Ukrainian mafia clan. The article boils down the results of the BBC’s investigative television shown on its “Panorama,” programme in April 2018
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The bombshell investigation alleges that members of the clan and their immediate families engaged in money laundering in order to purchase high-end real estate properties in the middle of London.
The allegations, while well known to experts on Ukrainian and Russian organized crime and professional Ukraine watchers, flesh out in an easy to comprehend popular manner the revelations of the so-called “Paradise Papers”, the November 2017 data hack of more than 13 million financial documents that were leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
This investigation also focuses heavily on evidence provided to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project by Italian mafia investigators who were unable to open a case as none of the crimes were committed on Italian territory.
The BBC investigation reveals that Angert’s filmmaker daughter is the registered owner of three houses worth millions of British pounds. The intricate offshore shell company structures which were allegedly used to buy up London real estate were set up by a London lawyer named Alexander Popivker, who, the article reveals, is married to Angert’s sister.
Odessa mayor Gennadiy Truhanov, long suspected of mafia ties, was revealed by Italian police investigators to be the member of the gang who “trained members of the gang in hand-to-hand combat and sniper shooting with high precision weapons.”
The report comes at a particularly difficult time for the mayor, who was briefly arrested in mid-February in the Kyiv airport upon his return to Ukraine from a three-month-long exile in Greece on suspicion of embezzling state property by misappropriating city funds. Click here to read the article
Truhanov’s prompt release on bail caused tremendous amounts of political tension in Ukraine:
The BBC documentary will likely put more international pressure on the acting Ukrainian authorities to revisit their understanding with the mayor.
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