The businessman from Moscow who was shot and wounded in the parking lot of a hotel in the Laurentians on Friday has left in his wake, since his arrival in Quebec, several people who complain of having been defrauded. One of his ex-associates, who managed to infiltrate the entourage of Donald Trump last year, claims today that he forced her to date rich men in order to extract money from them.
Updated at 0:01
This is what emerges from a survey to which The Press has been participating since the end of August, in partnership with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international consortium of journalists.
“Valeriy forced me to go on dates with guys and ask them for money to support our lifestyle,” Inna Yashchyshyn said in a Miami court deposition last June.
“Maybe I found someone on the street, or in restaurants, or even online. I was not asking for money from the stranger. I would go on a date, strike up a friendship, and Valeriy would pick up my phone and start contacting guys from my phone and asking for money for food, bills,” she explained.
Inna Yashchyshyn’s name began circulating in late summer, when OCCRP revealed that she may have been dating Donald Trump and his entourage at his private club in Florida under a false identity in 2021. According to several witnesses, she said her name was Anna de Rothschild and that she was heir to the financial empire of the same name in Europe.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY OCCRP
Under the alias Anna de Rothschild, Inna Yashchyshyn managed to meet Donald Trump and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in 2021.
“She wasn’t just mentioning the last name. She spoke of vineyards and family estates and of her childhood in Monaco,” said John LeFevre, a former investment banker who met her at the club, in an interview with an American journalist member of the consortium.
In a sworn statement filed at the Montreal courthouse, Ms.me Yashchyshyn claims that she was totally under Valeriy Tarasenko’s thumb at that time. She claims that he initially hired her to care for his underage daughter, but came to control her aggressively to “literally hold her hostage”.
The Tarasenko family deny these claims and claim that Mr.me Yashchyshyn abused their daughter. Valeriy Tarasenko has accused her former babysitter of committing fraud herself on her own initiative.
Fire
On Friday, the Sûreté du Québec was contacted around 12:45 p.m. for an “armed attack” on Chemin Fridolin-Simard, in the Laurentians. Shots were heard in the parking lot of the Complexe hôtelier l’Estérel.
Valeriy Tarasenko was found on the spot, shot and wounded, according to our sources. Police refused Friday to confirm the identity of the victim. Audrey-Anne Bilodeau, spokesperson for the SQ, affirms that the injured person underwent hip surgery after his admission to hospital and that there is no fear for his life.
Valeriy Tarasenko spent a lot of time in Estérel, where his wife (from whom he says he is separated) owns a house and land that she has been trying to divide up for several years.
A vast police operation was still underway on Friday evening in the area of the Estérel complex. The Major Crimes Investigation Division took over the investigation, and witnesses were interviewed by the authorities. A wide security perimeter was also established to carry out the investigation.
PHOTO DENIS GERMAIN, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
A vast police operation was still underway on Friday evening in the area of the Estérel complex.
“The Sûreté du Québec is doing everything it can to clarify the circumstances that led to the victim’s injuries. For the moment, in order not to harm the investigation, no other details can be shared, ”says Sergeant Catherine Bernard, spokesperson for the police force.
Negative influence
Valeriy Tarasenko, who was arrested for carrying a truncheon in a metro station in 1998, according to Russian court records, immigrated to Quebec around the beginning of 2008 to join his wife Anna, whom he had married in Russia a few years earlier, according to a judgment of the Superior Court of Quebec.
Quickly, he was involved in a bitter legal dispute with Yury Manakhov, the adoptive father of his wife, former owner of a Russian maritime company based in Blainville.
Mr. Manakhov said he was cheated out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by his daughter, who was “under the negative influence of her husband Valeriy Tarasenko”.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY OCCRP
Valeriy Tarasenko is a Russian national who was involved in several financial disputes.
“As far as I know, Valeriy has never worked and he is involved in activities that are not clear,” testified Mr. Manakhov.
The latter said that he had received threats and had been the victim of an arson attack targeting his car. In 2015, Valeriy Tarasenko was charged with death threats against Mr. Manakhov at the Montreal courthouse. The case was settled by a peace order which prohibited him from approaching his stepfather.
Mr Manakhov ultimately won his case when the courts found that his daughter had submitted false documents to the court and had a false creditor testify in the hope of appropriating her father’s fortune.
During the trial, another resident of Montreal came to tell how Valeriy Tarasenko’s spouse had extracted tens of thousands of dollars from him, which she promised to give him, but of which he had never seen the color again.
According to a source familiar with the matter, a Quebec entrepreneur also contacted the Sûreté du Québec in 2021 to declare that he had been cheated of a large sum by the Tarasenko family in another file.
FBI Questions
In parallel, Valeriy Tarasenko had set up in 2010 what he presented as a charity in Montreal, which he called the United Hearts of Mercy. Inna Yashchyshyn is listed in the Quebec Enterprise Register as one of the organization’s directors. The organization also had a branch in Miami. He claimed to raise funds for major humanitarian causes of the day, such as the passage of a hurricane in Haiti or the collapse of a bridge in Italy.
Three Florida residents told OCCRP reporters and the Pittsburg Post-Gazette that they had been questioned by the FBI about this alleged charity. A former administrator of the organization filed a statement at the Montreal courthouse that the United Hearts of Mercy was being used for fraudulent purposes.
An employee of an online payment company, Stripe Inc., told OCCRP reporters that several credit cards were fraudulently used to make donations to the organization. The management of another online payment platform specializing in charities, Fundrazr.com, confirmed in a statement that it refused to process payments from the organization because it had “failed internal anti-fraud checks”.
The Canada Revenue Agency has not found any trace of the organization in its archives. “Regarding the United Hearts of Mercy, we can confirm that according to the records of the Canada Revenue Agency, this organization is not currently a registered charity and has not been previously” , a spokesperson said by email.
Joined by The Press On Friday, Inna Yashchyshyn would not comment on the assault on her former partner.
“Anyway, I don’t know what they’ve been doing since I left them a year ago,” she said of the Tarasenko family.
“So I have no comments,” she concluded.
With the collaboration of Delphine Belzile and Henri Ouellette-Vézina, The Pressand journalists from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)