According to reports, the agency used a sham corporation to target a condo in a Miami development owned by two Russian businessmen.
According to the Miami Herald, the FBI conducted a raid on an apartment at the Trump Towers complex in Sunny Isles Beach, a Miami enclave known as “Little Moscow.” Due to the unit’s ownership by a Russian shell corporation, social media users have been speculating wildly about possible connections to former US President Donald Trump.
On Thursday, a group of FBI agents and neighborhood police arrived at unit 4102 in the Trump Tower III building on Collins Avenue for unknown reasons. Three agents can be seen moving about the residence in video that the Herald was able to obtain. The only thing an FBI representative would confirm was that the organization “was conducting court-ordered law enforcement activity in the vicinity of that location.”
According to Miami-Dade County property records, the opulent high-rise apartment has been owned by MIC-USA LLC, a front company run by Russian businessmen Oleg Patsulya and Agunda Makeeva, for more than ten years. In 2020, the couple was accused of defaulting on their mortgage, but the lawsuit was quickly resolved.
Many of the previous president’s detractors commented on the raid on social media after seeing the terms “Russian” and “Trump” near together, piecing together conspiracies from recent stories.
“FBI agents just searched a Russian-owned condo in Trump Towers in Florida. One poster mused, “I’m beginning to think that the whole Russia thing wasn’t a hoax after all,” while another gloated that “President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, and many other Americans not cavorting with Russians” didn’t have the “problem” of FBI investigators searching their homes.
The Republican presidential candidate only licensed his name to the owners, as he has done to dozens of other complexes throughout the world. The Trump Towers building is neither owned nor run by the Republican presidential candidate. The fact that the condominium is owned by a Russian is also not unusual for the neighborhood; in fact, Sunny Isles Beach’s considerable Russian community gave rise to the nickname “Little Moscow.”
Better-informed Twitter users assumed the raid was connected to a case of sanctions violations by citing various companies registered domestically under Patsulya’s name. Since Moscow started its military action in Ukraine last year, local Russian expats have reportedly expressed concerns about US law enforcement seizing their property.
When contacted by the Miami Herald, Patsulya’s wife stated that she had “no idea” what the raid was “about,” however she acknowledged that the family attorney had told her to keep quiet.
