The FBI and Homeland Security came calling at New York properties tied to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
Federal agents and NYPD detectives searched Vekselberg’s properties at 515 Park Avenue in Manhattan and 19 Duck Pond Lane in Southampton, NBC New York reported. Agents were seen carrying boxes at the properties.
Zeckendorf Development built the 57-unit condo building on Park Avenue in Lenox Hill. In March, two other Russian billionaires, Valery Kogan and his wife Olga, quietly started shopping their unit at the Park Avenue building as the invasion began and sanctions brewed.
Vekselberg is a Vladimir Putin ally and head of metals conglomerate Renova Group. The billionaire was one of the Russian oligarchs sanctioned after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leading to the United States seizing his $90 million yacht off the coast of Spain in April.
Besides the sanctions, the Department of Justice is also investigating Vekselberg in connection to alleged bank fraud.
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The Ukrainian-born Vekselberg had his assets frozen by the United States and was barred from doing business with American companies.
Although Vekselberg’s properties weren’t seized, wealthy Russians are fearful of losing their assets as a result of Putin’s war on Ukraine. In the spring, Dolly Lenz, one of New York’s highest-producing residential brokers, said she had been inundated with requests from wealthy Russians to sell assets before the government tried to take them.
Since the easing of tensions between Russia and the United States following the Cold War, wealthy Russians have gobbled up homes in high-end locales along the eastern seaboard, such as Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row and Miami’s Fisher Island.
In April, the House of Representatives passed nonbinding legislation calling on President Joe Biden to confiscate and sell seized Russian assets, potentially to fund military and humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
— Holden Walter-Warner