A former Toronto truck company owner known as “Russian Mike” has been extradited from Curacao to New York, where he has pleaded not guilty to smuggling drugs with the Sinaloa Cartel of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
Mykhaylo Koretskyy will use Jeffrey Lichtman, the high-powered lawyer who represented El Chapo at the latter’s Brooklyn trial, despite prosecution concerns that Lichtman, who still represents El Chapo, faces a potential conflict of interest by representing both men.
At a hearing Wednesday in Manhattan, Koretskyy waived any conflict fears, and Judge Paul A. Crotty agreed that the Canadian was, “knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily” using Lichtman’s services.
Lichtman told the National Post the hearing was “brief and painless,” but prosecutors had zeroed in on the lawyer’s involvement, claiming his relationship with El Chapo could stop him from properly representing Koretskyy.
The joint Canadian-Ukrainian citizen, 44, stands indicted by the Southern District of New York for working with El Chapo between October 2008 and January 2014 to import “five kilograms or more” of cocaine into the U.S.
That four-year-old indictment was unsealed when Koretskyy was arrested in Curacao, an island in the Dutch Caribbean, in January 2018. He was sent to New York in recent days after exhausting all appeals against extradition.
Dutch court documents indicate Koretskyy is suspected of charging cartel leaders, with whom he allegedly had long-running relationships, hundreds of thousands of dollars to run trucks loaded with cocaine from the U.S. into Canada. His routes allegedly ran from L.A. to Buffalo and over the Canadian border.
Lichtman insisted that Wednesday’s court procedure on potential conflict, known as a Curcio hearing, was a standard affair.
“He (Judge Crotty) accepted the waiving of any conflict of interest, it’s not a big deal,” Lichtman told the Post.
To illustrate his point Lichtman said he also faced a Curcio hearing when Juan Carlos Ramírez Abadía, the trafficker known as “Chupeta,” testified against El Chapo. Lichtman had visited with Chupeta after the latter was arrested in Brazil in the late 2000s. When the grim-looking Chupeta, who had extensive surgery to disguise his appearance, ended up in court facing El Chapo, Lichtman said a similar hearing was required.
“It doesn’t take much to trigger a Curcio hearing. The judge didn’t think it was an issue,” he said of Koretskyy’s case.
But court documents show prosecutors had numerous proposed questions for Koretskyy about Lichtman’s role. In a letter to Judge Crotty on Monday, they said El Chapo would have “disclosed confidences” to Lichtman during the Brooklyn trial — confidences which Lichtman is forbidden to share with Koretskyy, thus potentially damaging the Canadian’s defence.
They also argued that were Koretskyy to eventually to turn on El Chapo and cooperate with the U.S. government, Lichtman’s ability to advise the Canadian would be compromised, given that Koretskyy’s testimony could hurt El Chapo.
A list of queries prosecutors said the court might wish to put to Koretskyy included: “Do you understand that Mr. Lichtman may not wish to take positions in your case before trial, during trial, or at sentencing that are critical of (El Chapo), even if criticizing him might help your defense?”
They also wondered if Koretskyy had, “received any inducements, promises, or threats with regard to your choice of counsel in this case?”
Koretskyy, as was his right, waived any concerns about the potential conflict and prosecutors didn’t contest it.
In recent weeks Lichtman told the Post that although he also works for El Chapo, that had “no connection at all” to how he also came to work for Koretskyy, whom he said he had visited in Curacao.
“It was really just a coincidence,” he said. “It helps though, that I’ve already the opportunity to cross-examine the main witness against El Chapo.”
That witness is the Colombian Hildebrando Alexander Cifuentes-Villa or “Alex,” El Chapo’s long-time right-hand man, who turned against the Mexican kingpin and helped to convict him. Alex is also expected to take the stand against Koretskyy should the Canadian go to full trial.
“And I look forward to having another shot at him, to showing the ‘full’ Alex as opposed to the heavily sanitized Alex that appeared in the Guzman case,” Lichtman said, pouring scorn over a trafficker he said believed in “15-foot aliens.”
At El Chapo’s trial, Judge Brian Cogan did not allow certain facts about Alex to be revealed under cross examination. But documents later unsealed after a request by the New York Times and Vice showed that Alex’s interests include the Illuminati, Freemasonry, UFOs “and the idea that there was an impending apocalypse in 2012.”
“There are plenty of people who want to get out from under lengthy sentences, that are willing to testify against anyone and everyone,” Lichtman said. “The case against Mike Koretskyy is a fraction of the case against El Chapo Guzman.”
RCMP
While Koretskyy awaits his next hearing on July 30, questions remain over an RCMP warrant for him that pre-dated his Curacao arrest by two-and-a-half years.
Court records show that in May 2015, a warrant was issued for Koretskyy for trafficking in a substance and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence. But no drugs charges were ever brought against him in Canada, where he was free for years despite being indicted in the U.S.
Another Canadian, Stephen Tello, is listed in the same U.S. indictment as Koretskyy but is currently imprisoned in Canada, having been sentenced to 15 years over a huge 2015 RCMP drugs sting.
Lichtman wouldn’t be drawn on Koretskyy’s Canadian life, associates or business affairs, but called the sequence of events predating his Curacao arrest “bizarre.”
“I don’t understand what happened in Canada, for someone who was wanted for extradition to the U.S.” he said.
“There’s no doubt that there was an investigation of him in Canada. Everybody knew where he was. He was not in hiding. The American prosecutors could have asked Mike, or his lawyer in Canada, and he would have come to New York. No one bothered to seek him out.
“I can tell you that it was bizarre,” Lichtman added. “Anybody that looks at it objectively would agree the same.”
RCMP has refused to comment beyond saying that they are aware of Koretskyy from media reports, and that they don’t discuss their investigative methods.
Like El Chapo, Koretskyy is being held at the hardscrabble Manhattan Correctional Center. Koretskyy, Lichtman said, is housed in general population and faces conditions “not even remotely close” to those faced by El Chapo, who languishes in the prison’s far more restricted special housing unit.
“Nobody’s happy being in jail,” he said Thursday of the Canadian, “but he’s hanging in there.”
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
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