Mayor Suarez’s secret side gigs included advising associates of Kremlin-linked oligarch

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez earned payments totaling six figures advising two financial firms run by close associates of a Russian oligarch, two of several side jobs he refused to reveal to the public until he ran for president, with its more rigorous disclosure requirements.

Suarez received between $160,000 and $220,000 combined working for Dreamer Capital and Legacy Wealth Advisors, which share a Brickell office with a business and charity connected to Igor Makarov, an oil tycoon worth in excess of $2 billion.

Dreamer and Legacy are led, respectively, by Lazar Finker and his son, Eugene Frenkel. Both have longtime financial and personal ties to Makarov, who holds a spot on the Putin List — a U.S. government roster of the mega-rich with Kremlin ties.

Dreamer and Legacy are among more than a dozen income sources, paying millions, that the mayor had refused to detail until he briefly ran for president, dropping out in August. The Federal Election Commission requires presidential candidates to reveal who pays them.

The income sources listed in the filing include a crypto mining company whose branded shirt Suarez wore at the same time he was promoting Miami as a crypto hub, launching a city-branded cryptocurrency that failed and beckoning crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried (pre-scandal) to move his headquarters to Miami.

Also listed: a bank that both hired Suarez and held the note on his home mortgage. And a business networking company that received funding from the city prior to making him a paid board member. And both a private equity company and an outfit that allows customers to earn points by renting properties within the company’s network. And his law firm.

As a part-time mayor, Suarez can accept private employment as he sees fit — as long as it doesn’t overlap with his mayoral duties and the employers don’t receive special city benefits in return. He has insisted he kept his private jobs and public duties separate, but until now had mostly refused to reveal the identities of those employers, meaning taxpayers could not see for themselves.

Despite this refusal, the Miami Herald was able to document one instance in which Suarez’s worlds overlapped — profitably for both the employer and Suarez. In an investigation earlier this year, the Herald revealed that a local developer had paid Suarez $170,000 for consulting work at the same time Suarez’s staff was deployed to help an affiliate, Location Ventures, overcome a regulatory hurdle that threatened to derail a major Coconut Grove project.

The Justice Department is now investigating that connection. The mayor has denied any wrongdoing.

Suarez, a real estate lawyer by trade, has refused to comment on the list of employers made public in August. Since he was elected mayor in 2017, Suarez has generally refused to answer questions about his outside income sources or reveal his legal clients, which he still refuses to do even after he was forced to identify his employers.

Suarez’s self-imposed silence has coincided with a huge leap in his net worth, as reported in yearly financial disclosures, from a negative number in 2014, when he served on the city commission, to $3.4 million now. His mayoral salary is roughly $130,000.

This story is based on a review of corporation documents, court filings, news archives and IRS documentation for tax-exempt nonprofits.

A billionaire and his associates

Makarov, once a competitive cyclist, made billions in the privatization of energy resources that accompanied the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Finker and Frenkel worked closely with Makarov — Finker, almost from the beginning as a co-founder of his flagship company, Frenkel, later, as an advisor.

Makarov’s operations have drawn scrutiny from U.S. authorities for decades over concerns about improper influence peddling and, according to a 2006 report in the Washington Post, money laundering. But he has never been convicted or charged and is not under U.S. sanctions, although the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia all have sanctioned him in connection with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sanctions can mean travel bans and asset freezes and seizures.

According to the filing, Suarez worked for Dreamer Capital and Legacy Wealth Advisors from July 2021 to August 2023, at which time he went “on leave.” It was about the time he was ending his presidential campaign.

Legacy Wealth Advisors, whose CEO is Frenkel, counsels “ultra-high net worth individuals,” according to the company’s website. It doesn’t indicate what Suarez did for the company other than “advisor [independent contractor].”

Legacy Wealth would not provide any more specificity on what the mayor did for the money or how he came to be hired but said it “did not involve any business with the city of Miami.”

Dreamer Capital — which has minimal public presence and whose manager is Finker — did not respond to the Herald’s questions about what Suarez did to earn his money.

Frenkel and Finker have both contributed to campaigns benefiting Suarez. According to campaign finance records, the two men, along with businesses and individuals tied to them, contributed $22,500 to Accountable Miami, a 2018 political committee controlled by Suarez. The committee was active during the mayor’s unsuccessful effort to change his position to a “strong mayor” with administrative authority over the city’s day-to-day operations. In his current status, he doesn’t vote on commission agenda items but has veto power and can lobby commissioners on behalf of proposals.

Frenkel had another connection with the mayor, giving him passes to the 2020 Super Bowl, according to public records.

Suarez is permitted to accept such gifts as long as they are disclosed, as this gift was, and the giver is not a city lobbyist. The state ethics commission is currently investigating the mayor over allegations that he broke that rule in another instance.

The mayor made $5,000 a month from Legacy Wealth and 5% of “specified transactions” from Dreamer Capital, according to the FEC filing. The disclosure provides only ranges of income, not specific figures.

Longtime bonds

After emigrating from Russia in 1991, Finker joined Makarov in co-founding a Jacksonville-based commodities trading company called Itera USA. It would spawn several businesses under the umbrella name of “Itera” and later still, ARETI (Itera spelled backward).

One such firm, Itera Group, established a headquarters in Moscow after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It secured control over gas distribution to the East European nations of Ukraine and Georgia.

By the early 2000s, Itera had become the fourth-largest energy company in the world.

A 2006 Washington Post story noted that Itera International Energy, one affiliate, had “long been dogged by international controversy over its obscured ownership” and that “oil and gas traders and Russian experts have long suggested that Itera’s real owners are former executives of Russia’s energy giant Gazprom, who purportedly created [Itera] as a vehicle to transfer money out of Russia and into their pockets.”

The bonds between the three have endured. Finker’s son, Frenkel is not only Makarov’s friend, but an “advisor”, according to a 2021 press release from the government of oil-rich Turkmenistan.

Makarov, Finker and Frenkel did not answer the Herald’s questions about their mutual ties noted in this story.

Legacy Wealth’s spokesperson said only that Makarov has never been the company’s client. A spokesperson for Makarov, who recently renounced his Russian citizenship, said that he has “never contracted” Legacy Wealth and never “had any business relations” with Suarez.

Political contacts

In the late-1990s and 2000s, while Itera was reporting billions in annual revenue, the company cultivated relationships with influential politicians.

Makarov paid for Jacksonville Democratic Rep. Corinne Brown to tour the former USSR, the Washington Post reported in 1997. While on the trip, Brown persuaded Ukraine to deliver 500,000 tons of wheat the country had owed to Turkmenistan, a Central Asian nation on the Caspian Sea, as part of Itera-related deals. In an unrelated matter, Brown was later convicted and imprisoned for using a charity as a slush fund, but the conviction was later overturned and she pleaded guilty to a lesser tax charge.

In 2006, the FBI searched Itera’s Jacksonville office in connection with a probe into whether Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, had inappropriately used his influence to direct clients to his daughter’s lobbying firm. He wasn’t charged.

That Jacksonville office building and the Miami office on Brickell are home to an impressive network of more than 150 companies, with the same cast of current and former Itera executives, including Finker and Frenkel, including some firms with South Florida connections, a Herald analysis of company records found.

Finker and Frenkel, for example, are officers of LCP, a Florida limited liability company that has ownership interest in Biscayne Bay Brewing, operating in Miami’s old downtown post office building, court records and Securities and Exchange Commission filings show.

The brewery is the brainchild of Republican operative Jose Mallea, who worked on Jeb Bush’s 1998 gubernatorial campaign, served in various capacities in President George W. Bush’s administration and managed Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2010 Senate run.

Mallea did not respond to an inquiry from the Herald.

Charitable side

Finker, Frenkel and Makarov have all been generous charitable donors in South Florida. Beneficiaries include the University of Miami business school, Make-A-Wish South Florida (whose new, under-construction headquarters in Overtown will be called the Finker-Frenkel Wish House) and Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital.

Like his father, Frenkel has been a trustee of the Makarov Foundation, IRS filings show.

The most recent filings list the nonprofit’s address as the same Brickell office shared by Dreamer Capital, Legacy Wealth and ARETI Energy.