Moldovan flees to US to share details of $1 billion theft
WASHINGTON — The past months of Mihail Gofman’s life read like spy fiction: Fearing he’s being followed, he flees his native Moldova in a borrowed car, drives to neighboring Romania and flies to Washington. There he gives U.S. officials information he claims links top Moldovan political leaders and possibly U.S. citizens to a $1 billion heist that gutted the tiny eastern European nation’s banking system.
Gofman used to be deputy chief of a government anti-money laundering unit in Moldova, a former Soviet republic sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania.