Federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Monday accused a Russian tycoon of scheming to make $1 million in illegal campaign donations to federal and state political candidates in the United States to gain favorable licensing decisions for a cannabis business venture.
The prosecutors said the donations by the businessman, Andrey Muraviev, 47, were at the heart of an illegal campaign finance scheme conducted in the months before the 2018 midterm elections that also involved two Soviet-born businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and two other co-defendants.
Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman were allies of Rudolph W. Giuliani, former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, and assisted Mr. Giuliani in his efforts to undermine Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he was a leading Democratic presidential candidate.
The allegations against Mr. Muraviev are not new; his name and alleged role surfaced at the October trial of Mr. Parnas and a co-defendant, Andrey Kukushkin, who were convicted of conspiring to funnel Mr. Muraviev’s money to American political candidates to aid their marijuana business plan.
The indictment unsealed on Monday charges Mr. Muraviev with making political donations as a foreign national in the name of another person, as a so-called straw donor. A second count accuses him of conspiring to do so.
Mr. Muraviev is believed to be in Russia and remains at large, the prosecutors said. Each of the two counts against him carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, the…
