Fruman Or ‘Furman’: Did Rudy’s Arrested Ukranian Pal Use Fake Name?
Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas Image by Getty
By Aiden Pink October 18, 2019
Igor Fruman, one of the two Ukrainian-born activists who were arrested this month and charged with illegal campaign finance donations to benefit President Trump and the Republican Party, has been accused by prosecutors of covering up his actions using what might have been overlooked as a typo: Donating in the name of “Igor FURman,” not “Igor FRUman.”
The problem: There’s a real Igor Furman, and he denies ever making those donations.
The Daily Beast reported Thursday that House Majority Trust, a conduit for donations to various Republican Party organizations, received a $100,000 donation in April 2018 from someone named Igor Furman. The donation form listed the donor’s occupation as being the owner of a Los Angeles-based medical billing company – which the real Dr. Igor Furman owns. But the donation form also listed his home address as a South Florida building where the activist Igor Fruman owns a condo.
A spokesperson for Dr. Furman denied making the donations. After learning of that denial, Fruman’s lawyer, John Dowd, told the Daily Beast he had “no idea” if Fruman had purposefully misrepresented himself in making the donation.
Fruman and Lev Parnas, both of whom are Jewish, had donated more than $1 million dollars to Republican causes and later went on to assist Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in looking for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Department of Justice claims that Fruman and Parnas hatched a scheme to transfer campaign contributions to Republicans from non-citizens, which is illegal. They claim that the Fruman/Furman donation not an accident but part of an “effort to conceal the source of the funds and to evade federal reporting requirements.”
Fruman and Parnas are also accused of pressuring the Ukrainian government to ask for the dismissal of American ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was later fired by Trump.
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at pink@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink
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