The FBI on Tuesday raided the offices of a downtown Cleveland real estate company that owns several buildings in the city.
FBI agent Vicki Anderson said agents searched the offices of the Optima Management Group at One Cleveland Center. Optima is a conglomerate of companies across the United States that has interests in real estate in Cleveland, including One Cleveland Center and the 55 Building on Public Square.
Anderson said agents also have served search warrants in Miami.
Authorities in Cleveland have been conducting a wide-ranging probe involving Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky that has been ongoing for quite some time. Kolomoisky is a principal of the Privat Group, a large Ukrainian business company, and principals of the company are also part of Optima.
Optima had a much larger presence in Cleveland about a decade ago when it bought several buildings under the leadership of executive Chaim Schochet. Its presence in Northeast Ohio has dwindled in recent years.
Kolomoisky and a fellow Ukrainian billionaire formed PrivatBank in the early 1990s. It became one of the Ukraine’s key financial institutions, according to Forbes. The Ukrainian government nationalized the bank in 2016 after an investigation suggested there was large-scale fraud over a decade-long period, Forbes reported.
The financial news outlet places Kolomoisky net worth at about $1.2 billion. The Daily Beast, citing The Financial Times, said he lives in Tel Aviv and remains a complicated political figure in his home country. He is a former governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.