A Miami real estate broker was convicted on money laundering charges for helping two sanctioned Russian oligarchs rent and sell luxury properties in Florida – the first time a US realtor has been held responsible under federal laws.
Roman Sinyavsky pleaded guilty earlier this month to conducting real estate transactions involving blocked properties owned by Vladimir Putin puppets Viktor Perevalov and Valeri Abramov.
The two oligarchs were first sanctioned in 2018 by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for owning a Russia-based construction firm that built a highway in the Russian-occupied Crimea region of Ukraine.
Perevalov was designated again by OFAC last December for operating in the construction sector of the Russian economy.
Nonetheless, the pair had managed to buy condos in the posh North Miami Beach town of Bal Harbour, as well as nearby Aventura.
According to the US Justice Department, Sinyavsky “conspired with others” from 2018 to 2023 to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and commit money laundering by “maintaining, transferring, selling, and leasing several luxury condominiums” that the oligarchs owned and collecting, sharing, and using the proceeds to maintain the properties.”
Sinyavsky was fined around $1.1 million and faces up to five years in jail when he is sentenced on April 11.
The first-of-its-kind conviction could help dissuade other brokers who have teamed with foreign drug lords, kleptocrats and other unseemly characters to wash their blood money through US real estate, according to crime and corruption expert Louise Shelley, the founder and executive director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center.