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Pelham resident and attorney Robert Wise pleaded guilty on Tuesday, April 25 to participating in a scheme to make around $3.8 million in payments to maintain six properties in the US that were owned by Viktor Vekselberg, a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to the US Attorney's Office for Southern District of New York.
According to federal officials, Vekselberg was designated a Specially Designated National (SDN) by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on April 6, 2018, after it was found that the Russian government's actions in Ukraine constituted an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the US's national security and foreign policy.
Around the time of March 11, 2022, Vekselberg was redesignated as an SDN, and his yacht and private airplane were blocked.
Before this designation by OFAC, between 2008 and 2017, Vekselberg acquired six properties in the US through a series of shell companies. These properties were: two apartments on Park Avenue in New York City; a Suffolk County estate in Southampton; two apartments on Fisher Island, Florida; and a penthouse apartment also on Fisher Island, Florida.
The six properties were worth around $75 million as of April 2023.
Wise, who practiced law in New York City, was retained by Vekselberg’s longtime associate, Vladimir Voronchenko, to help with the acquisition of the properties. Additionally, Wise also managed the finances of the properties, which included duties such as paying common charges, property taxes, insurance premiums, and other fees from his interest on lawyer’s trust account (IOLTA account).
Between February 2009 and March 2018, shell companies owned by Vekselberg sent around 90 wire transfers totaling around $18.5 million to this IOLTA account. Wise would then use these funds to make payments to service the properties at the direction of Voronchenko and his family member who lived in Russia.
After Vekselberg was designated as an SDN, the source of these funds that were used to maintain the six properties changed, and Wise's IOLTA account began receiving wires from a bank account in the Bahamas held in the name of Smile Holding Ltd., a shell company controlled by Voronchenko.
The IOLTA account would also receive funds from a Russian bank account held in the name of a Russian national who was related to Voronchenko, federal officials said.
Between June 2018 and March 2022, around 25 wire transfers totaling around $3.8 million were sent to Wise's IOLTA account, which was then again used to maintain Vekselberg's six properties even though Wise knew he would be promoting sanctions violations.
Additionally, after Vekselberg was sanctioned in 2018, Wise and Voronchenko tried to sell the Park Avenue apartment and the Southampton estate despite not being issued a license by OFAC for the payments or attempted transfers.
Wise pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to commit international money laundering and faces a maximum of five years in prison. He also agreed to the entry of a forfeiture order in the amount of $3,771,727.67, to be satisfied by a payment of $210,441, federal officials said.
An indictment charging Wise's co-conspirator and fugitive, Voronchenko, was unsealed on Tuesday, Feb. 7, and a civil forfeiture complaint was filed against the properties on Friday, Feb. 24.
US Attorney Damian Williams commented on the case, saying, "With today’s guilty plea, Robert Wise has admitted that he misused his position of trust as a lawyer, laundering money to promote sanctions violations by Viktor Vekselberg’s longtime associate, Vladimir Voronchenko."
"This office is proud to continue its work to enforce the sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine," Williams continued.
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