Whipped Cream Difficulties

Hillel Nahmad owns the Helly Nahmad Gallery in Manhattan. The Nahmad family is kind of a big deal in the art sales world.

Despite sneers from some of their more staid peers who have accused them of unfairly negotiating special terms with auction houses, they are among the most powerful, wealthy and colorful members of the elite global club of fine art dealers.

The Helly Nahmed Gallery was raided by the FBI yesterday. Hillel Nahmed is charged with…

…playing a leading role in a far-flung gambling and money-laundering operation that stretched from Kiev and Moscow to Los Angeles and New York.
The case features a wide cast of characters, including a man described as a Russian gangster accused of trying to rig Winter Olympic skating competitions in Salt Lake City and a woman who once organized high-stakes poker games for some of Hollywood’s most famous faces. In all, 34 people were charged on Tuesday with playing a part in what federal prosecutors described as two separate but interconnected criminal groups — one operating overseas and the other in the United States. Together, they are accused of laundering more than $100 million in gambling money.

Mr. Nahmed is also charged with “defrauding an unnamed person by selling him a painting for $300,000 when it was worth only $50,000.”

Also indicted: “Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, 64, whom prosecutors describe as the leader of a Russian organized-crime gang.”

In addition to the new charges against him in this case,

Mr. Tokhtakhounov, who remains at large, was indicted in 2002 on charges that he was part of a scheme to rig the results of the Winter Olympic finals in Salt Lake City in pairs figure skating and ice dancing.

More:

According to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan in that case, he was accused of working with an unidentified member of a Russian crime gang and an unidentified Russian skating official to rig the competition. He helped secure a gold medal for Russia in the pairs event in exchange for a victory for the French ice dancing team, according to the complaint.

The United States attempted to extradite Mr. Tokhtakhounov from Italy, but the extradition order was overturned by the Italian courts, and Mr. Tokhtakhounov has never been tried on that charge.