Giuliani associate made millions in Ukraine before U.S. troubles
WASHINGTON >> Long before Igor Fruman was arrested in a widening political scandal that threatens the American presidency, the Soviet-born émigré and sometime Florida man came to riches through political connections in Ukraine.
Fruman’s fortunes were made in Ukraine in the late 1990s thanks in part to ties to at least one politician there, according to anticorruption groups. A review of his past two decades in business suggests he might have been trying to rekindle sagging fortunes at the time of his Oct. 9 arrest for what the indictment said was “a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office” in order to “buy potential influence with candidates, campaigns” and foreign governments.
Aside from his scowling mug shot — taken after the FBI arrested him at Dulles International Airport with a one-way ticket out of the country — not much is known about Fruman, though in 2012 he was ranked the 195th-wealthiest person in Ukraine, worth almost $29 million by Focus, a weekly Ukrainian news magazine published in Russian.
Despite that, he has had a lower profile than his alleged co-conspirator and fellow émigré, Lev Parnas, who appears almost daily in newly unearthed photos showing him alongside prominent GOP politicians.
How did Fruman get so rich? And does he still have that fortune?
Interviews with some Fruman business associates and civic groups in Ukraine who have watched his business and political connections paint a picture of an Odessa businessman whose fortunes peaked about the time of his Focus ranking in 2012, though he has faced setbacks and challenges ever since.
Described in Ukrainian media as someone not shy about bending rules, Fruman had a businesses that included a U.s.-based company that shipped food products from the U.S. and elsewhere to Ukraine, real estate development in Ukraine and a now-bankrupt Soviet-era canning plant that produced dairy products and baby food.
If the man now accused by the U.S. government is little known, a colorful, decade-old, 24-page promotional brochure for his oncethriving, multipronged company Otrada Luxury Goods fills in many of the blanks.
The magazine-style brochure for Otrada Luxury Group, the overarching holding company with many retail and real estate subsidiaries, features a smiling photo of Fruman as its CEO.
“Welcome to Ukraine, Welcome to Luxury,” begins the sales pitch from a younger, thinner Fruman, who is pictured on the second page. The sales pitch continues: “Otrada Luxury Group represents the finest products, produced by the finest companies that the world has to offer.”
The enterprise catered to Ukraine’s mega-wealthy, who by the mid-2000s represented a small but growing number about 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The company brochure boasted of sales of $27 million in 2007 and an average annual growth rate of 23% since its founding in 1999.
Although Otrada’s main U.S. operation was F.D. Import & Export, which moved food products to Ukraine, the brochure spotlighted a wide range of businesses, including Royal Motors Auto Center, since 2006 an importer of luxury vehicles in Ukraine and described in the glossy magazine as an authorized Jaguar and Land Rover distributor.
Reached by telephone last week at the number for the car dealership provided in the brochure, employees of Royal said they’d never heard of Fruman. He appeared in Ukrainian television interviews at the dealership as late as 2011, but it is unclear if he still owns it.
Fruman did not respond over a period of more than a week to questions about his businesses left on his answering machine at Otrada’s main U.S. office in Tarrytown, New York, and before and after his arrest employees there refused to discuss him or what business is done there.
Emailed questions about Fruman’s business ties were not answered by Fruman or by John M. Dowd, his lawyer in the ongoing congressional impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s conduct during a July phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Fruman and Parnas were hit with a subpoena on Oct. 16 after refusing to appear before lawmakers.
Otrada also boasted in the brochure of numerous retail spots for fashion goods, jewelry and highend watches. It also owned the Otrada Beach Club in Odessa, waterfront condos there and the city’s five-star Hotel Boutique Otrada. At the hotel, a desk clerk who answered the phone wouldn’t answer any questions about Fruman, and employees declined to discuss who owns it.
Fruman’s success, however, began with something far more pedestrian than luxury goods. His import-export business focused on life’s daily essentials.