https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/10/how-an-indicted-oligarch-became-a-key-player-in-trumps-ukraine-scandal/
"Firtash is a controversial figure in Ukraine. He made a fortune—which Forbes in 2014 estimated at $500 million—by working with Russia’s Gazprom. The state-run natural gas giant gave Firtash a role as its partner in a business shipping gas from Russia to Ukraine. In 2010, Firtash was a key backer of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian leader accused of massive corruption. (Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair now serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence in prison, was a top consultant for Yanukovych.) In 2014, shortly after Yanukovych fled Ukraine during the Maidan revolution, US prosecutors in Chicago indicted Firtash for allegedly bribing Indian government officials to secure a contract to sell titanium to Boeing. He once told the US ambassador in Kiev that years earlier he had to obtain the approval of Semion Mogilevich, an alleged Russian mobster, for his initial business endeavors. The Justice Department in 2017 called Firtash an “upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime,” an allegation he denies. In June, a US federal judge cleared the way for Firtash to face charges in Chicago. But he is fighting extradition from Austria, where he has been been under house arrest since 2014, arguing in court there that he was targeted for prosecution by US officials for political reasons. This summer, Firtash hired Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, a husband-and-wife legal team known for championing Republican causes and defending Trump on Fox News. A year earlier, diGenova and Toensing had agreed to join Trump’s defense team, but that arrangement was scuttled due to conflicts of interest caused by the couple’s prior work for other clients involved in the Trump-Russia scandal. Toensing has also worked with Giuliani to find dirt on the Bidens in Ukraine. She planned to join the former New York City mayor on a trip to Kiev in May, during which they hoped to gather more negative information about Trump’s Democratic rival."
