FBI agents raided a luxury Trump Tower condo in Florida owned by two Russian businessmen last Thursday.
The raid was carried out on May 11 at Trump Tower III at 15811 Collins Avenue, Unit 4102, in Sunny Isles Beach. Local police officers assisted the FBI agents.
The oceanfront condo is owned by two Russian businessmen, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Agunda Konstantinovna Makeeva, through a shell company called MIC-USA LLC, reported the Miami Herald.
Patsulya and Makeeva are accused of violating U.S. sanctions against Russia that were imposed after the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year, according to The New York Times.
“In light of the sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation, we have been successfully solving challenges at hand,” Mr. Patsulya wrote in an email to a Russian airline last August, offering to help circumvent global sanctions, according to a criminal complaint filed last week, per the NYT.
The two businessmen are facing charges of violating U.S. export controls and international money laundering.
Patsulya’s wife, Roza Pereira, told the Miami Herald that she knows about the raid but “can’t talk about it.”
“The lawyer [for my husband] said not to talk to anyone,” she said. “I have no idea what it’s about.”
Sunny Isles Beach has earned the nicknames “Little Moscow” and “Moscow by the Sea” due to the significant migration of Russians to the city.
Miami-Dade County property records show the condo that was raided was purchased by the shell company in 2013 for $1.65 million.
The unit has three bedrooms and sits on the 41st story of Trump Tower III.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, wealthy Russians in Sunny Isles Beach grew worried that they would be targeted by President Joe Biden’s sanctions against their home country, as reported by Business Insider last February.
The Dallas Express reached out to the FBI for further comment on the raid.
The FBI National Press office said, “The FBI conducted court ordered law enforcement activity in the vicinity of that location. No further information is available at this time.”
