April 26 (UPI) — A New York attorney has pleaded guilty to making nearly $4 million in payments to maintain the U.S. properties of sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
Robert Wise of Pelham, New York, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil on Tuesday when he also agreed to forfeit more than $3.7 million. Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 6 when Wise faces a maximum of five years’ imprisonment for the one count of conspiring to commit international money laundering.
Wise had been hired to assist Vekselberg with acquiring six properties valued at more than $75 million in New York and Florida and was retained to maintain them, with various shell companies owned by the Russian sending him some $18.5 million between February 2009 and March 2018.
The next month, the U.S. Treasury designated Vekselberg over his government’s actions in Ukraine, freezing all of his assets and barring U.S. citizens from doing business with him, but federal prosecutors said in the indictment that between June 2018 and March of last year, 25 wire transfers totaling some $3.8 million were sent to Wise’s account from shell companies to maintain and service the six proprieties.
“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,” Andrew Adams, director of the Task Force KleptoCapture, said in a statement. “Admission to the bar carries with it a public trust that attorneys will act with honesty and integrity — a trust that Robert Wise chose to betray in exchange for an easy, illicit paycheck.”
The Task Force KleptoCapture was created following the Kremlin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine to target oligarchs attempting to evade sanctions.
The guilty plea comes after Voronchenko, an associate of Vekselberg who retained Wise to acquire and maintain the properties, was charged as part of the scheme in an indictment unsealed Feb. 7.
A civil forfeiture complaint was also filed against the six properties later that month.
Following Russia’s invasion, the U.S. redesignated Vekselberg and blocked his yacht and private jet.