Mongolia ex-PM bought NYC apartments with embezzled mining money, US says
By Luc Cohen
March 26, 2024Mongolian
Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold inspects an honour guard during an
official welcoming ceremony in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing
June 16, 2011. Batbold is on a three-day official visit to China.
REUTERS/David Gray/File Photo
NEW
YORK, March 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. is seeking to forfeit two New York
City apartments bought by a former Mongolian prime minister with stolen
mining funds, prosecutors said on Tuesday, as U.S. officials crack down
on money laundering in high-end real estate.
Federal
prosecutors in Brooklyn said former Prime Minister Sukhbaatar Batbold
and his family bought the two midtown Manhattan apartments for a total
of $14 million in 2012 and 2015.
They
said the money came from a $68 million mining contract awarded to Hong
Kong-registered Catrison Limited in 2011 to buy copper concentrates from
the Erdenet copper mine in Mongolia, one of the biggest in Asia.
Catrison had no mining experience and was controlled by Batbold through trusted intermediaries, prosecutors said.
"Batbold
used the profits from his illicit corruption scheme to purchase
high-end real estate in violation of United States federal law," Breon
Peace, the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said in a statement.
Batbold served as Mongolia's prime minister from 2009 to 2012 and is currently serving in the country's parliament.
His lawyers said in a 2020 court filing in a separate civil case that Batbold had no property in New York.
"Mr.
Batbold looks forward to his day in court, when he will have the
opportunity to defend himself against these unfounded claims," his
lawyer, Orin Snyder, said in a statement.
Batbold has not been charged with a crime.
The U.S. Treasury Department in February formally proposed
a long-awaited plan aimed at curbing the flow of illicit funds through
American real estate markets. Officials say as much as $2.3 billion was
laundered through U.S. real estate between 2015 and 2020.
Prosecutors
said shell companies controlled by a member of Catrison's board bought
an apartment at the Park Imperial building on West 56th St. for $3.9
million in 2012. Batbold's son used the apartment as his mailing address
when opening a U.S. bank account the following year, prosecutors said.
Batbold's
son is also listed as a "co-owner" of an apartment in Carlton House on
East 61st St., which was bought by another company controlled by the
Catrison board member for $9.9 million in 2015, according to
prosecutors.