Does the Carver Laraway-Boris Jordan-George McHugh Connection Mean We Now Have the Eurasian Mob on our Doorstep?
The Russian Mafia, known in Russia as Bratva, the “brotherhood”, has been around since the Tzar’s days, but up to about the 90s was fairly limited to muscling businessmen and in the protection/extortion racket, and black markets. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the so-called Russian mob was expanded to include ruthless criminals from areas like Chechnia, Ukraine, and other areas until it became more appropriate to call them the Eurasian mob.
The Eurasian mob has been involved in everything from Russian industry, banking and insurance, vice and corruption, to collaborating with other criminal groups like the drug cartels in Central and South America, and even financing and providing guns to the South Italian mafia, the Camorra.
Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, said that the Russian mafia posed the greatest threat to U.S. national security in the mid-1990s. In August 2010, Alain Bauer, a French criminologist, said that it “is one of the best structured criminal organizations in Europe, with a quasi-military operation.” It’s only gotten worse.
One example is Vyacheslav “Yaponchik” Ivankov, who was sent to Brighton Beach (NY) in 1992, allegedly because he was killing too many people in Russia and also to take control of Russian organized crime in North America. Within a year, he built an international operation that included, but was not limited to, narcotics, money laundering, and prostitution and made ties with the American Mafia and Colombian drug cartels, eventually extending to Miami, Los Angeles, and Boston. Those who went against him were usually killed.
Question: If Ivankov was a well-known organized crime figure and undesirable in his own country, Russia, how did he manage to get into the United States??? Who paid whom off? Where was our national security organization at the time? Where is our national security, Homeland Security, the FBI, now?
On June 7, 2017, 33 Russian mafia affiliates and members of the Russian mob were arrested and charged by the FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and NYPD for extortion, racketeering, illegal gambling, firearm offenses, narcotics trafficking, wire fraud, credit card fraud, identity theft, fraud on casino slot machines using electronic hacking devices; based in Atlantic City and Philadelphia, murder-for-hire conspiracy and cigarette trafficking.
On 19 February 2018, 18 defendants, members of the Russian mob, were accused of laundering over $62 million through real estate, including with the help of Vladislav Reznik, former chairman of Rosgosstrakh; one of Russia’s largest insurance companies. The Russian mob is involved in everything from real estate to banking to aluminum refining companies in Kentucky. (See the article, “Russian organized crime operates just about everywhere” by G. W. Abersold Ph.D. – March 13, 2018). Have they now found a home in Coeymans, a guest of Carver Laraway, at the so-called Coeymans Industrial Park. Will Coeymans be renamed “Russia on the Hudson?
Even the Times of Israel published an article, “US targets ‘Thieves-in-Law,’ Russian mafia royalty” (23 December 2017) and writes, “Washington seems to be confirming that the threat posed by the fabled “Russian mafia” from the former Soviet republics is a more organized one than previously supposed.” Gee! Didn’t you know that?
Russian Mob in Your Back Yard!
Well, Guess What? The Russian mob may be right in your back yard, in the Coeymans Industrial Park, in the grey building with no visible sign identifying what’s going on inside, the very building that houses the Curaleaf marijuana growing and processing operation headed by none other than Russian businessman, Boris Alexei Jordan, who is working in partnership with Carver Laraway and his lackey George McHugh.
This is the Curaleaf facility in the Coeymans Industrial Park
No sign on the building. You’d never find it if you were looking for Curaleaf. We identified it by the many vents on the building and a tiny sign on a door mentioning “Curaleaf Security.” We later confirmed with an employee outside the building.
Boris Jordan likes to talk about how he almost single-handedly turned the Russian economy, including banking and industry, around in Russia. But the boy-wonder, Boris Alexei Jordan, has only a B.A. from New York University, not very impressive credentials for a veritable miracle worker. So how does a guy with only an undergrad degree get to Russia and just start reorganizing things? There’s got to be more, much more to this story than meets the eye. We think we know what it is, too.
Jordan thinks we all came down with the last shower, it seems. Does he and his pals Carver Laraway and George McHugh really think we believe he’d get anything done in Russia without the backing of the powerful Russian mafia and Putin, who himself is closely connected with the Russian mob and mob money? Does Jordan, who blatantly admits that “business is done differently in Russia than it is in the USA,” and that bribery is an accepted way of doing business there, think we’re all stupid?
The Russian Bear Loves Dollar$!
Our question is also this: If he didn’t have mob connections and didn’t work with the Russian mafia and Putin’s crew, how did he stay alive over there? The answer is easy: He worked with them. They had him in their pockets.
It’s no secret that the Eurasian mob is getting more sophisticated and has entered the banking, insurance industries, and even aluminum refining in Kentucky. Jordan himself admits that now that billionaire bucks have bought off the United States government and legislatures, that pot is a major growth industry and a huge market. Jordan has carved out a chunk of that market and want’s us to believe that he’s the genius behind it all. He’s the front man, maybe, but he’s no genius and it’s not Jordan who’s behind it all.
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies in the United States have been aware of this growing problem since at least the 1990’s if not the 1970s but have done remarkably little to slow down the mob’s growth in the United States or even to keep their kingpins out of the country. We really should be asking Why?
In a Connecting Heights (PBS) interview, the interview starts out with a bit of background:
Boris Jordan was a key figure in Russia’s economic transition to capitalism in the early ’90s, assisting in the launch of the Russian stock market and the privatization of state assets. Later appointed chief executive of Russia’s Gazprom Media as well as general director of its NTV television network, Jordan was forced to resign in early 2003 under political pressure.
But there’s one key bit of information we haven’t shared: Boris Alexei Jordan is an American of Russian parentage. You see, his people emigrated from Russia after the revolution. He admits he grew up in a strongly Russian traditional home, went to Russian school, and he even speaks fluent Russian. According the interview transcript, Jordan says:
I was very interested in Russia. My family came from this country. I was educated in the United States at home as a Russian. I had a Russian education on Saturdays for Russian language and Russian history. My university education was based on U.S.-Soviet diplomacy.
[Editor’s Note: This is a bit confusing because at one point Jordan says his education was based on “Russian diplomacy” and a couple of breaths later says that his background was “Russian finance.” The man can’t keep his story straight.]
We also find it interesting that Boris Jordan entered the Russian economic scene in the 1990’s, a time when the Russian state was in a turmoil and the Russian mob was seizing the opportunity of a country in chaos to get its fangs into very vulnerable and influential business sectors. They obviously needed a plan and needed one fast: Enter Boris Alexei Jordan and a small team of other opportunists. You don’t just step in because a bunch of patriots invite you in, not in Russia. The mob doesn’t just let some hungry wannabe waltz in and take over what was theirs to claim. Jordan had to have mob support or he was a dead man.
One clue about the sinister connections is a statement made by Jordan in an interview, when he talks about setting shop in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow:
“We literally had to come in on a weekly basis with a suitcase of $25,000 or $50,000, or $100,000 in cash to just finance this whole operation and put it together.“
Jordan describes how he got things done, avoiding the word “bribe” and replacing it with “incentivize,” according to Jordan: Where’d he get the suitcases of money he was talking about in his interviews? Santa Claus? The Easter Bunny?
Where’d the suitcases of money come from? The United States has laws and rules concerning how much money leaves the country and Russia certainly has rules about the sources and destinations of US$. Where’d the money come from, Mr Jordan?
Was it Easter Bunny money in the suitcases?
In the end it was a very old, simple process that got these guys to agree. We had to basically, I wouldn’t say bribe, but incentivize them by giving them stock.
Shakespeare wrote: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?” In other words, a rose would smell just as sweet if you called it a cabbage. Well, bribery by any other name smells just as bad. Whether you call a bribe and incentive or not, it’s still a bribe. Sorry, Boris.
Doesn’t matter whether it’s in the Kremlin, Cuomo’s office, the NY state Senate or Assemby, or in Washington D.C., or George McHugh’s or Michael Biscone’s office.
It’s still bribery.
At another point in the same interview, Jordan responds:
“There’s an argument that I’ve compromised principles somehow by trying to adjust to doing business in the Russian environment…If you’re going to operate within this environment, if you’re going to have an impact on changing it, you can’t do it overnight. You can’t come in here and say, “For God’s sake, you have to follow the U.S. laws on securities for these operations.” You can’t do that. It’s just impossible…I’ve created a way of life for myself here [in Russia]. I’m living here with my family and my children for a very long period of time, and I intend to continue to live here. We are participants in an evolution and a change in this country…I’d love to change this country in two, three years, but I don’t want to make it look like the United States because, frankly, this country has tremendous things that are different from the United States.” [Emphasis provided]
That interview was conducted by PBS “Commanding Heights,” on October 3, 2000; Jordan was 33 at the time. There’s a lot going on in that background but we’ll gloss over it for now. Trust us when we say that it all supports our contention that Jordan is part of something much bigger and much more sinister than just growing pot.
We found another site that tells the story of how Boris Jordan does business. It’s a real eye-opener so do yourself a favor and read the article by Bill Browder, an American investor, “A true story of high finance, murder and my fight for justice in Putin’s Russia,” in which Jordan is a key figure.
American Investor Bill Browder, at war with Boris Jordan
Jordan was fired from his positions at Gazprom and NTV while in Russia. Apparently he stepped on Putin’s toes and had to go. Read the New York Times report at “American Financier Is Fired as Head of Russian TV Network,” Putin was angered by Jordan’s publishing premature reports of Russian troop movements responding to a Chechen terrorist attack on a Moscow theater that left 129 hostages dead. Jordan thought the report was ”exceptionally well done.” Putin’s response was, “journalists should not ply their trade ”on the blood of your own citizens — if, of course, those who do this consider these citizens to be their own.” The remark was widely seen as a jab at Jordan and a NTV journalist, Savik Shuster, a Canadian citizen. Jordan’s operation gets 129 people killed and Jordan thinks it was “exceptionally well done.” Disgusting.
The Russian Mob – Boris Alexei Jordan – His American Whores (Carver Laraway/George McHugh) relaxing together.
In one interview with CNBC he openly talks about getting US laws changed. Now how do you think he gets that little tidbit done? He also says that the Candadian market for pot isn’t big enough; its the US that is the target. Does that get your gray matter fired up yet?
Our research has shown that more is written about him in Russian than in English. In fact, credibility is an issue here, and there’s an awful lot about Boris Alexei Jordan that is in-credible. But make no mistake about it: Boris Alexei Jordan is 200% Russian.
For an interesting perspective, see the article “How Russia Prepared Renaissance Capital Co-Founder Boris Jordan For The Cannabis Industry” by Javier Hasse and Alex Oleinic , Benzinga contributors.
But all of that aside, we have to seriously ask ourselves where our elected and public officials were when all of this was in the planning and ultimately got approved by someone. We’re thinking especially of those closest to us and our children, those elected officials and public servants in whom we place our trust to make good decisions and to protect us:
- Ravena Coeymans Selkirk Central School District & Board of Education: When they’re not spending tax dollar wildly or evading paying taxes, where were they when the Town of Coeymans was considering this pot growing and processing facility? Of all the public servants, we’d have expected our kids’ educators to have chimed in at some point along the line. But they don’t care about anything but their own interests and their pensions.
- The Coeymans Town Board and the Ravena Village Board: Where were the public comment sessions and were were the town and village officials while all this was being hatched? Weren’t they elected to protect the public’s best interests? Instead they put out the Welcome Mat to a Russian billionaire, his American whores, and the Russian mob. Great job!
- Where were the Churches?!? All the Jesus Loves You! freaks. All the Bible Thumpers! All the Faith and Family Values hypocrites? All the good church-goers that fill the church parking lots for 45 minutes every Sunday? Where were your pastors, your priests, your bishops, your deacons and elders when all of this was happening?
- Law Enforcement: Yeah, we know: All we can do is enforce the law! Poor excuse, dudes! Are you a bunch of brainless manikins? A bunch of remote controlled robots who get reprogrammed every time the politicians conjure up some hare-brained scheme? Just a couple of years ago, we recall and so do you, you and our corrupt judges were ruining peoples’ lives for a dime-bag of pot. Now you’re right in the middle of the corruption protecting the industrial pot-growers? If that isn’t an example of public corruption and the mob at work, what is. Can you defend yourselves?
- But the worst bunch are the state and federal legislators, the people some voters put in the New York State Assembly and the Senate, and the US House of Reps and US Senate. They’re the biggest failures, disappointments and criminals because they are the real Whores of Babylon, it’s that bunch of elitists who sold us out. They took mob money to legalize another drug plague. They criminalized tobacco, an American addiction, only to legalize marijuana, a foreign addiction. They all should be tried as traitors!
- And our final accusation is against YOU! Where were you when all of this was going on? Probably watching some sick sitcom like Mike and Molly while the rest of us were out voting, exercising one of our most important rights. It was your responsibility, your duty, your obligation to safeguard your children, their community, and their future. You FAILED! Your children’s blood is on your hands. We’ll be there to remind you when catastrophe strikes, if it hasn’t done already.
Moscow on the Hudson
Kremlin and Red Square (Moscow), Law Office of George McHugh (Old Ravena News Herald Building), Coeymans Industrial Park, the News Herald Offices (the former George McHugh law offices). Moscow will soon be in Coeymans via the Coeymans Industrial Park!
The first installment of the Crandall Interview was published
