Federov is a nonpracticing Eastern Orthodox Christian but holds Israeli citizenship. He insists that he never stole from religious organizations. But according to statements he made to undercover agents for the New York City Police Department, the “overhead” for these events tended to reach eighty cents of every dollar.
Federov has always manifested the qualities of a mobster. He is greedy. He stole tip money from the strippers at his clubs. He is ruthless. He once forced a woman to drink bleach as punishment for an unknown transgression. He is ambitious. He brokered the complicated negotiation involving the transfer of a Russian military submarine to Cali-based Colombian narco-traffickers.
(Note: See www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/history/1999-2003.html-2006-03-07)
The unwavering point here is that there is no transaction too large or too small {Italics mine-Diane Liu 092507} to escape his interests if a profit can be obtained. Special attention should be paid to his emerging business connections with a shell corporation named Park Enterprises, based in Taipei, believed to be a conduit for business with North Korea… {Italics again mine-Diane Liu 092507}
Federov was born in 1965 in Odessa, a Black Sea port that was once the Marseilles of the Soviet Union. When he was three, he moved with his mother and his father to Rivno, a small city in the western Ukraine. He sang in a boy’s choir and participated in a boxing program set up by the Soviet military. His father was a professional thief and prosperous dealer in the Ukrainian black market. He’d trade stolen merchandise for choice cuts of meat, theatre tickets, and fresh vegetables. His father’s brother was a successful actor in Moscow.
In 1980, when Federov was fifteen, his father had the word “Jew” stamped in the family’s passports even though they weren’t Jewish. Then he managed to move the family to Israel and gain Israeli citizenship. Before leaving Ukraine, the Federovs converted their money into diamonds. They stashed some in shoes with hollow heels and hid the rest in secret compartments in a specially built piano, which they shipped to Israel.
In the late 1970s, the Soviet government was under diplomatic pressure to let Jews freely emigrate. In response, the Brehznev government searched their Gulag for Jewish criminals and allowed them to leave for America. Many were “recent converts.” More than forty thousand Russian Jews settled in Brighton Beach, a section of Brooklyn, New York. Most were sound citizens. But the criminals among them resumed their careers. By the time Federov arrived in 1992, Brighton Beach had already become the seat of the Organizatsiya, the Russian Jewish mob. Using his Russian ties, Yuri Federov fit in immediately and flourished…
In addition to his “normal” criminal activities, Federov has a habit of brutalizing women.
“This is cultural,” he once explained to an undercover FBI agent, following an arrest in 1996. “In Russia, it is manly to beat women. In the stories of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Gorky, to beat a woman is normal. Then you do something like that in America, something that you grew up with, and you’re arrested for domestic violence!It makes no sense.”
In an incident taped by the FBI and the DEA from a surveillance apartment across the street from Old Odessa, Federov once chased a girlfriend out of the club and hit her repeatedly with a hammer. On another occasion, he allegedly pounded a female dancer’s head against the door of his black Cadillac Escalade until the window broke and the vehicle was covered with blood. No charges were filed in either case.
Federov regularly abused his two daughters and his common-law wife, Tanya, an Estonian Jew whom he met in Israel. When the police arrived at their home in response to 911 calls, the wife was sometimes found huddled inside a locked car with her daughters or hiding in a closet. Tanya later vanished and is presumed dead. His daughters have changed their last name and live with a second cousin in Toronto…
Following one instance of domestic violence in Brooklyn, Federov was arrested. The arresting officer, who knew who he was, referred to him as “a filthy (expletives deleted) Russian Jew gangster.” Federov, though handcuffed, bit off the upper half of the officer’s ear. He beat the domestic abuse charge when his wife disappeared. But for assaulting a police officer, he drew four years in a New York State prison. {See NY Criminal Docket #98-CD-456-2} It was the first time Federov had been convicted of a felony…
Criminals with Israeli passports have a sanctuary that other criminals don’t. It is extremely difficult to extradite Israeli nationals, Israel being the self-proclaimed “land of opportunity,” at least in theory. It is not difficult, however, to deport Israeli citizens (e.g., USA vs. Meyer Lansky, usdj 020472).
Thus in 1999, the United States government confiscated Federov’s traceable assets in the United States (estimated at two million dollars) and deported him to Israel.
But as he departed, his enthusiasm for the land he was leaving was undiminished. “I love America!” Federov said to a federal marshal who escorted him to his departing flight. “The people are stupid, the government protects rich people and the police are corrupt. It is so easy to steal here! Even your big elections are stolen!”
Federov stayed in Tel Aviv for one month, then moved back to Ukraine. {Note: Surveillance conducted by French and Israeli intelligence partnerships. See CIA File No. 2006-SF-345-c.} He quickly became the guiding force behind The Caspian Group. He has survived several attempts on his life since 2003 from various competitors and other parties who might have a positive interest in his death. He has also always been known to strike back forcibly at those who have struck at him…
Through his normal tactics of terror, extortion, and intimidation, he has become wealthy again. The company (TCG) keeps no official records. Reputedly, Federov has a highly disciplined mind and a photographic memory. He keeps all financial records in his head…
The extent and degree of Yuri Federov’s influence in Ukraine, particularly in government circles, is unknown at this time but is also considered to be almost without limit…
Federov should be considered dangerous at all times. Under no circumstances should he be underestimated…
Attention should be paid to the fact that Federov, while on top of the Ukrainian underworld, has many competitors who would benefit with his demise and who might have an interest in his premature death…
SIXTEEN
When Constanza d’Amico awoke in Rome the morning of January 9, her head was pounding. She was trying hard not to think about the direction her life was taking. But she couldn’t help it.
She lay in bed with her eyes open. The sun penetrated the drawn blinds in her bedroom, spilling little slashes of sunlight across the room. The clock at her bedside said 9:12 a.m.
Her stomach churned. Her nerves wouldn’t settle. Her mouth tasted like cigarettes. Then, next to her in her bed, she was aware of light snoring.
Oh, yeah. She was married.
Beside her, Rocco, her husband, slept fitfully. She had arrived home before he did in the early morning hours, and he had crawled into bed next to her.
Not unusual. Rocco was a musician, a guitarist for a techno-pop band that had a modest following around the city. He often came poling in shortly before dawn, usually smelling of sweat, booze, and cigarettes, sometimes smelling of cheap perfume, but never smelling of nothing. He would set the clock radio in their bedroom for 2:00 p.m. the following afternoon. He would set it LOUD with a heavy metal American CD. The intense volume of music was the only thing that could rouse him.
Whatever. Constanza had given up caring and always made plans to be out of the apartment when the music blasted on. She and Rocco had been married for four years and had started to go their separate ways. He was particularly repulsive, she had come to learn, when he crawled out of bed in the early afternoon after his usual night of debauchery. So she arranged each day to miss those golden moments.