The Justice Department has indicted a Russian spy who fed Rudy Giuliani false dirt on the Biden family for money laundering over his alleged attempt to secretly buy two luxury apartments in Beverly Hills.
Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker whom the Trump administration has accused of being an “active Russian agent for over a decade,” allegedly used a shell company to hide his ownership of the apartments and transfer the $4 million used for their purchase, according to a criminal complaint.
“While participating in a scripted Russian disinformation campaign seeking to undermine US institutions, Derkach simultaneously conspired to fraudulently benefit a Western lifestyle for himself and his family in the United States,” said Assistant US Attorney Michael J. Driscoll in a press release that accompanied the charge.
The Trump administration sanctioned Derkach shortly before the 2020 election on the grounds that he was “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who “conducted a covert influence campaign focused on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives” to influence presidential elections. elections.
Derkach was prominent in Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to spread false conspiracy theories that former Vice President Joe Biden’s pressure on Ukraine to commit to anti-corruption measures was a secret plot to quash a criminal investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian company where the son worked of Biden, Hunter. as a member of the board of directors.
Giuliani met publicly with Derkach during a 2019 trip to Ukraine, where Trump’s then-lawyer was soliciting dirt on the Bidens ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
Derkach also cozyed up to congressional Republicans by sending packages of alleged Biden dirt to Sens. Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson and then-Rep. Devin Nunes. US intelligence agencies and their fellow lawmakers have repeatedly warned lawmakers that Derkach had ties to Russian intelligence and was trying to undermine the election, prompting some Republicans to consider embracing the Ukrainian politician. But Giuliani was not deterred.
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“The chance that Derkach is a Russian spy is no better than 50/50,” Giuliani himself admitted to The Daily Beast in an interview after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Ukrainian oligarch.
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Federal prosecutors in the US have charged Derkach with seven counts of money laundering, bank fraud and tax evasion, but he is unlikely to appear in a US court anytime soon. Derkach appears to have fled Ukraine after a series of criminal investigations against him by prosecutors and intelligence services in Kyiv earlier this year.
In June, Ukrainian intelligence claimed that Derkach was a Russian military intelligence agent who had conspired with Moscow to use private security companies to aid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In October, Ukraine’s anti-corruption court ordered the oligarch’s detention on charges of accepting more than half a million dollars in payments from Russian intelligence services, but noted that he remains a wanted fugitive.
