10, but Fruman, from Sunny Isles Beach, and Parnas, from Boca Raton, were active both in politics and in business in the state during the 2018 elections. Florida is not mentioned in the grand jury indictment released Oct. The governor of Nevada has responded to the details of Fruman and Parnas’ indictment by forming a panel on marijuana industry corruption. But prosecutors said Parnas, Fruman, Correia and the foreign business partner “continued to meet into the spring of 2019” in discussion of their marijuana business.
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The group failed to obtain a license because it applied too late in the state process, according to the indictment. A foreign investor - prosecutors didn’t name him in the indictment but noted that Kukushkin wanted to hide the investor’s “Russian roots” - made two deposits of $500,000 each into a bank account to help finance the donations.
Prosecutors say they planned to create a marijuana company, and Correia created a table of planned political contributions worth up to $2 million in a “multi-state license strategy,” the indictment says. The other three men were already in custody. Correia was arrested Wednesday in New York. “I’m aware of it.”Īccording to the indictment, Fruman, Parnas, and business partners Andrey Kukushkin and David Correia, began working in Nevada back in June of 2018 to gain a marijuana license. “They were absolutely trying to buy a license in Florida,” a second marijuana lobbyist said of Fruman and Parnas. Florida allows the use of marijuana for medical purposes, though there are petition drives to make the drug legal for recreational use as well. In Florida, where Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis recently cautioned about companies doing business “in duffle bags of cash,” a license can sell for as high as $55 million. In Nevada, where pot is legal for recreational use, regulators issued 61 marijuana licenses last December. “We see people willing to pay large amounts of money to get in to the industry,” Supervisory Special Agent Regino Chavez said in a short podcast released in August by the FBI. The FBI took the unusual step four months ago of warning about public corruption in the marijuana industry in western states, where they said an individual license can go for as much as $500,000. The cannabis industry is dominated by cash and foreign investors due to banking restrictions, making it an easy and potentially lucrative target for cash- and foreign investors - and a possible repository for tainted money. Parnas was born in Ukraine and Fruman in Belarus.įoreign money cannot be used to fund political donations - but it is often found in the marijuana business. Prosecutors also say the men were secretly planning to spend up to $2 million of a foreign business partner’s money in Nevada and other states on political campaigns while pursuing marijuana licenses. About half the donations were made through Global Energy Producers, a Delaware corporation that federal prosecutors say was a shell company. The two men contributed more than $725,000 to state and federal campaigns over the last three years, according to the indictment, Florida elections records and the campaign finance watchdog organization OpenSecrets. Last week, one day after they were arrested while trying to board a one-way flight out of the country, Fruman and Parnas were subpoenaed by House Democrats to turn over documents related to their efforts to help Giuliani make connections with Ukrainian officials in the pursuit of unfounded allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden. The money they spread around to political campaigns over the last three years apparently helped them work their way into Trump’s orbit, where they forged a relationship with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The revelations deepen the intrigue around the duo’s efforts to use campaign donations to ingratiate themselves with the most powerful politicians in state and federal government.
“I don’t think they ever had a substantive conversation with anybody in the weed business,” said a marijuana lobbyist familiar with their ambitions.
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