We’ve been telling you for years that Michael Cohen’s business history couldn’t survive first contact with serious investigative scrutiny. He’s been tied his entire life to emigres from Russia and Ukraine; he’s been their business partners, and they’ve been the source of rivers of money from that part of the world which Cohen has used to make himself a very wealthy man. A number of them have reputed ties to organized crime. Taxis, real estate, casino cruise boats. These are all businesses that require large amounts of cash to operate. They’re all good ways to channel cash into the United States. With Cohen taxis have always been the biggest red flag in our reporting.
For years, Cohen was a big operator in the NYC taxi business, a business which involves the ownership of one or more of the finite number of medallions that allows you to drive a taxi. These used to be worth more than a $1 million apiece. They’ve dropped considerably with the rise of Uber. We’ve been waiting for a year for attention to turn to Cohen’s taxi business and his business partners, especially Simon Garber, a taxi magnate who has or has had major taxi holdings in cities ranging from New York to Chicago to New Orleans to Moscow. Allegra Kirkland’s July 2017 article goes into various aspects of Cohen’s businesses, including some details on the taxi business.
More to come.
