Developer sued for taking proceeds of crime from foreign nationals

By Christine Duhaime | October 18th, 2015

New York real estate developer being sued for $18 billion for accepting alleged proceeds of corruption from foreigners who were known PEPs

According to an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, real estate developers in New York are being sued for accepting proceeds of corruption from politically exposed persons (PEP). The plaintiffs are the parties who were the victims of corruption – a municipality in Kazakhstan and a bank of Kazakhstan, BTA Bank. They filed a civil claim against two men accused of removing $40 million from Kazakhstan and parking it into real estate in New York City.

Both accused are politically exposed persons – one is the former chairman of the BTA Bank, Mukhtar Ablyazov who is in jail in France, and the other the Mayor of the Kazakh city of Almaty, Viktor Khrapunov. Allegedly, they removed billions from Kazakhstan as proceeds of corruption.

The plaintiffs are also suing an American real estate developer, Joseph Chetrit, for accepting the alleged proceeds of corruption and allowing the funds to be parked in real estate developments. The plaintiffs are seeking $18 billion in damages.

To read more about Mukhtar Ablyazov and the billions that apparently vanished from BTA Bank, see here. He is implicated in the biggest fraud case in the UK and was ordered extradited to Russia and the Ukraine after he fled from the UK mid-trial in 2012 and went into hiding in France.

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