Incompetence? Who's still buying it?
Something from the mainstream press:
Non-working hydrants created obstacle to fighting fire at vacant Trumbull County steel mill
https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/fire-breaks-out-at-vacant-steel-mill-in-warren/
Firefighters had to run about 1,500 feet of hoses, the length of about three football fields, to get water from the one working hydrant on Mahoning Avenue to the fire.
The chief said it took three to four hours to clean up those hoses and six hours to put out the fire. If the hydrants closer to the building had been working, this could’ve been done much sooner.
“We probably could have got a handle on it a lot quicker if the hydrants would have been working ’cause we had multiple hydrants right by the building,” Chief Natali said.
https://newsinteractive.post-gazette.com/dirty-dollars-2/
The owners had been secretly pumping millions of dollars into the plant and other real estate — while fighting federal regulators — in a massive criminal scheme that was carried out across the country, federal prosecutors say.
The factory was the centerpiece of a U.S. steel fortune acquired by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who is accused by prosecutors of stealing hundreds of millions from Ukraine's largest bank between 2008 and 2016 and then plowing the money into steel mills from New York to Texas.
A fire broke out in 2010 in a Dumpster containing dangerous chemicals at Felman. As Paula Cunningham Rickard, a health and safety worker, tried to put out the flames, the chemicals exploded, throwing her across the concrete. She said she now collects disability from her injuries.
In the case of Mr. Henry, who worked on the upper floor of the aging facility, his exposure to smoke and fumes was so intense that he came down with toxic poisoning that forced him to leave his job, court records state.
"There were so many people injured and hurt," said Richard Richmond, 47, a former plant engineer who plunged 30-feet through a hole in a badly damaged upper floor a decade ago and broke nearly two dozen bones in his body. "It's heartbreaking."
Along the way, the operators gained the help of the elected leaders and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Washington, D.C., lobbying firms to fend off regulators and keep operating in one of the most economically distressed areas of West Virginia.
Mr. Kolomoisky, a Ukraine resident who once sent his own armed militia to take over a government oil company, did not respond to repeated interview requests. His criminal defense lawyer, Michael J. Sullivan, did not return messages, but in earlier interviews with reporters, he denied the allegations.
Mr. Manchin, an influential centrist Democrat who has pushed back on President Joe Biden's more progressive environmental plans, did not respond to questions from a Post-Gazette reporter on Tuesday near the Senate Chambers.
An aide accompanying the senator said he would accept questions emailed to the staff. Despite repeated messages, Mr. Manchin's office did not respond to written questions but provided a statement:
"Senator Manchin has always fought to protect West Virginia jobs and worked in a bicameral, bipartisan way to protect the good-paying jobs at the Mason County facility," said Sam Runyon, communications director.
The fight over the release of the information came as the oligarch was moving the money into the country — sometimes tens of millions a week — with the help of PrivatBank employees who were loyal to Mr. Kolomoisky and fellow oligarch Gennadiy Bogolyubov, both major shareholders in the Ukraine bank.
Once the funds arrived in the United States they were poured into real estate, including most of the steel factories, two office parks in Dallas, a sprawling manufacturing center in Illinois and four office towers in Cleveland, including a 31-story high rise with gleaming skylights and a sweeping view of the city.
In less than a decade, at least $750 million was moved into the country from Ukraine — all through Deutsche Bank, the global lender that has paid millions in fines to U.S. regulators in recent years over breakdowns in anti-money laundering.
The top officer of the West Virginia factory, Mordechai "Motti" Korf, a Florida businessman accused by federal prosecutors of participating in the laundering scheme and serving as one of Mr. Kolomoisky's key allies, did not respond to interview requests.
But his lawyer said his client has done nothing wrong. "Mr. Korf never engaged in money laundering of any kind, and he has no knowledge of anyone else doing so," said Marc Kasowitz, a New York attorney who once served as a personal lawyer to former President Trump. "Any allegations against Mr. Korf are false and irresponsible [and] arise from Ukrainian political disputes he has nothing to do with and ultimately will be dismissed."
The next year, Ms. Capito went to the trade commission to ask that tariffs be continued on Venezuela and other countries accused of dumping steel to help the factory in West Virginia save jobs, just months after Mr. Kolomoisky and his partners secretly moved $20 million in embezzled money into the United States to buy another steel facility in Kentucky, according to court records filed by prosecutors.
To hide the transfers, the money was moved through 13 different bank accounts of offshore companies in a dizzying series of transactions, prosecutors said.
Months after the Kentucky factory was purchased, red flags were raised once again, this time by state officials who demanded to inspect the financial records of the West Virginia metals plant but were unable to get them.
In order for the factory to get a big reduction in electric costs, it needed to show financial audits, which track the dollars that go in and out of the facility.
Again and again, state officials demanded to see the reports, but Felman Production said it didn't have them.
On some days, the smoke and fumes rising from the facility would blow into the nearby neighborhood, covering the homes with a layer of industrial grime, said neighbors and three former employees.
"It ate the paint right off. Imagine what it does to your body," said Paula Cunningham Rickard, 57, the safety employee who was injured when a dumpster filled with chemicals caught fire and exploded in 2010.
Two homeowners who live near the facility said they are unable to remove the brown stains from the sides of their homes, even though the fumes have lessened in recent years. "It eats right into the vinyl siding," said Tom Roush, 70, who lives less than a quarter mile away.
In the first decade of operation starting in 2006, federal regulators turned up two dozen serious violations that they said could cause accidents and lead to injuries or death, the most of any of Mr. Kolomoisky's factories.
When the EPA pitched the plan to impose pollution restrictions on the facility and another in Ohio, then Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine jumped into the fray and wrote a letter to three of the most powerful politicians in the country at the time — Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan — asking them to help ease the restrictions.
"There is no doubt that protecting the public health from hazardous air pollution is critical, but a proper balance should be struck to prevent job losses, let alone a risk of closure to local businesses," he wrote in 2017.
Mr. Kasowitz, the lawyer for Felman's CEO, said the factory "has made significant investments in worker and environmental safety and will continue to do so." And that the reportable incidents that took place so far this year at the facility are below the industry average.
He said that since the agreement was reached in the lawsuit, Felman has invested more than $2 million in "safety and environmental capital expenditures" and more than $1.6 million in safety and environmental initiatives.
By 2016, Mr. Kolomoisky's money run in the United States began to shift in a new direction when Ukraine regulators turned up evidence that showed the largest bank in the country was in trouble.
Stress tests on the institution by the government showed big money shortages, prompting regulators to take over the bank in late 2016 to avoid a collapse from what they suspected was massive fraud.
After the government looked at the evidence, "we found the fraud was even bigger," former Ukraine finance minister Alex Danyliuk told the Post-Gazette.
A subsequent audit showed $5.5 billion in losses — most of the money in loans doled out to companies owned by the oligarchs and related companies, auditors said.
The ability of Ukraine oligarchs to purchase 13 steel factories — an industry considered crucial to national defense — raises questions about the performance of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a federal panel empowered to screen such deals, said experts.
But less than 18 months after the state agreed to help by approving up to $35 million in rate cuts over six years, owner Ukraine oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky and his partners shut down and abandoned the facility, leaving 162 workers out of jobs without any medical insurance and owing dozens of suppliers, including Ohio Edison.
"They left the employees and the property high and dry," wrote Ohio assistant attorney general Karrie Kunkel in an environmental action against the facility.
The closing shows how powerful foreign figures with questionable pasts and wealth can exploit vulnerable communities in the heartland that are desperate for jobs and investment.
Finally, two months ago, just days after a settlement was reached between the attorney general's office and the mill, a spectacular fire broke out in the company offices in the early morning hours on Aug. 11.
When firefighters arrived to battle the blaze, they found the electricity had been turned off leading to the site and the fire hydrants shut off, with no water to douse the flames.
Ultimately, firefighters had to run fire hoses 1,500 feet to reach working hydrants on the main roadway, records and interviews show. The Ohio fire marshal's office suspects arson as the cause but has not reported any suspects.
Doug Emerine, trustee chairman of Champion Township where part of the plant is located, said the land needs to be cleaned up. "That's really our only hope at this point," he said. "It's sad to drive by that mill and see it. The disregard for the safety and health. The whole thing is disappointing."
He said that the electric rate cuts made to the facility were because the mill offered "a glimmer of hope" in restoring jobs. "You have an area that's dependent on jobs, and everyone was willing to throw everything at them."
And now, "we're stuck with the mess."
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has spent more than a year examining thousands of records — including internal bank documents and previously sealed court records — and conducted dozens of interviews that culminated in several stories about federal prosecutors’ first-ever laundering investigation of the U.S. steel industry.
Lawyers for the two men dispute the U.S. government’s claims the money was stolen from the Ukraine bank, saying it came from loans that were legitimate and have been upheld by the Ukraine courts in multiple decisions.
Several Ukraine legal experts interviewed by the Post-Gazette say, however, that those court decisions were reached during a campaign by the oligarch to file hundreds of cases in search of favorable courts and to withdraw from other courts to avoid losing.
Mr. Kolomoisky was a lightning rod of controversy in Ukraine at the time, especially after he dispatched his own armed militia into a government oil company in 2015 during a dispute.
Kolomoisky and a partner, Gennadiy Boholiubov, are accused of taking out billions in fraudulent loans and lines of credit from PrivatBank, which they co-owned, funneling the cash through a “web of entities” created by Korf and Laber.
Korf and Laber — who met Kolomoisky decades ago while working and volunteering in the Ukrainian province he governed — gave a total of more than $1.4 million to Brooklyn’s Jewish Educational Media, and nearly $1 million to the Manhattan-based Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States, nine countries which banded together after the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union].
Laber is listed as a board member of Jewish Educational Media, a nonprofit which promotes the work of the late Grand Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, the Ukraine-born spiritual leader of the Chabad Lubavitcher movement.
Colel Chabad, a Brooklyn charity for orphans and widows, received $466,647 between 2006 and 2013 from Laber Foundation Inc., while the Korf Family Foundation Inc. gave $476,000 between 2006 and 2013 to the charity.
Authorities have not accused the charities of wrongdoing.
Korf and Laber also face a civil lawsuit in Delaware from PrivatBank, and could have to forfeit millions worth of real estate and companies they purchased if the federal lawsuits from the DOJ succeed. No criminal charges have been filed.
While it is unclear if the two men used their charity connections to launder cash, experts say nonprofits are often used to avoid taxes and hide funds.
“Charities could certainly be part of an incestuous collection of legal entities that make it very difficult to follow the money,” said Laurie Styron, executive director of Charity Watch.
“Mr. Korf and Mr. Laber have never had any dealings with laundered money and any allegations to the contrary are patently false and irresponsible,” said attorney Marc Kasowitz. “They are very proud of their longstanding charitable contributions and the good that those contributions have brought.”
One of the tycoons is one of Ukraine's wealthiest and most influential citizens, a businessman who helped propel a former stand-up comedian and TV actor into Ukraine's presidency in 2019.
That man, Ihor Kolomoyskiy, and his associate, Hennadiy Boholyubov, have denied the accusations, saying the money used to purchase the U.S. assets that Korf and Laber now run came from the sale of their Ukrainian steel business to a Russian competitor for $2 billion.
In a 2002 book about Jewish diaspora communities, Laber was quoted as saying that he was introduced to his "Russian partners" -- an apparent reference to Kolomoyskiy and Boholyubov, as many people in eastern Ukraine speak Russian as their first language -- by Kaminezki, the rabbi who arrived in Dnipro in 1990.
Kolomoyskiy and Bohlyubov, who have Israeli citizenship, are close to Kaminezki and major supporters of Jewish culture in Ukraine and abroad.
"I didn't know who was honest and who wasn't, who we could work with, all the problems you run into in this part of the world. Without [Kaminezki] saying that 'this is an honest person' we wouldn't have known," Laber was quoted as saying. "Anyone can introduce you to another person; the point here is the reliability. He knows what's up, basically."
Kaminezki's characterization of Kolomoyskiy -- as recounted by Laber -- clashes with those who view the tycoon as among the country's worst corporate raiders.
Kolomoyskiy fled Ukraine in 2017 amid concerns over prosecution and a falling out with then-President Petro Poroshenko. He returned to the country a month after Volodymyr Zelenskiy defeated Poroshenko in April 2019 to win the presidency.
Though the constitution of the country doesn’t allow Ukraine citizens to be extradited, Mr. Kolomoisky also holds citizenships in Cyprus and Israel, which may allow the country enough room to find a loophole, said former Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka.
The star of both videos was the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, whose fortune comes from banking, aviation, media, and oil and gas. His power is not limited to the business world; in March 2014, he was appointed the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, where he used his wealth and influence to quell separatism, keep the violence in the neighboring regions of Donetsk and Luhansk from spreading westward, and protect his own financial interests. He accomplished this, in part, by providing substantial funding and assistance to some of the volunteer battalions that have been compensating for the inadequacies of the Ukrainian Army.
Ukraine, which has been at the center of geopolitical tensions between Russia and the United States for years, nationalized the bank in 2016. Last year, it was re-privatized and Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov have reportedly been attempting to regain control.
In the Chancery Court suit, attorneys for Privatbank claim that between 2006 and 2016 Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov created Delaware companies "for the purposes of facilitating the fraud."
In addition to the two billionaires, the alleged scheme included their U.S.-based "agents," Mordechai Korf, Chaim Schochet and Uriel Laber, as well as 20 companies linked to the individuals, according to the suit.
"Each of the defendants was unjustly enriched, engaged in fraudulent transfers, committed racketeering activities ... and engaged in a civil conspiracy," the suit states.
Kolomoisky also appears to have ties to the country's incoming president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose hit TV show was hosted by the oligarch's network. Reuters reported last week that Zelenskiy chose as head of his presidential administration a lawyer with links to Kolomoisky, who continues to fight with the government over control of Privatbank.
Ukrainians hope that Zelenskiy will fight for the common man instead. It’s a powerful narrative that has catapulted this political unknown within spitting distance of the presidency.
https://businessjournaldaily.com/article/arson-and-court-date-at-warren-steel/
It's hard for most people to believe that others can be so dark - "they'd never do that" most say. No - YOU wouldn't do that. They would.
"Human error" and "contamination" were easy to predict to be made the major culprit, while everything was planned and obviously there by November, 2021:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/proof-of-genocide
Everything has been, and is being arranged by the central AI that has been processing live data for several years:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/ai-makes-the-world-go-round
Okay, here is my take on the "fires" that considers the preceding as well as the upcoming steps:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/three-steps-in-the-california-fires