By: Staff Writer
May 6, 2022
A Grenadian diplomat to the Russian Federation charges that a US Senate candidate has his stories all wrong on labelling him a Russian spy and will carry his matter to the ends of the US justice system to prove so.
H.E. Oleg Firer, Grenada’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Grenada to the Russian Federation, spoke to Caribbean Magazine Plus about the lawsuit he has against US Senate candidate for Pennsylvania, Everett Stern, and Stern’s company, Tactical Rabbit, and the malicious claims Stern makes on websites, social media and in a book he wrote about Firer being a Russian spy. Mr Firer said that he “does not know” who Stern is or what his issue may be with him, but he will take his lawsuit to the end of the US justice system and “spend every last dime” trying to clear his name from the malicious allegations made by Stern.
H.E. Firer, who is a dual citizen of US and Grenada having been raised in New York, never held a Russian passport, has no family in Russia and has no business interests in Russia at all. His family hails from Odessa, Ukraine under the former Soviet Union and when he was a baby he and his family refuged through Austria and Italy to the US for a better life.
H.E. Firer said: “Even though people associate given name ‘Oleg’ with the Slavic region, it is originally from Scandinavia and does not automatically represent a person named Oleg being of a Slavic or Russian descent. I was born in a city called Odessa (Ukraine). I came to United States when I was a child, my first citizenship, believe it or not, was stateless. Legally a ‘stateless person’ is someone who, under national laws, does not enjoy citizenship – the legal bond between a government and an individual in any country.
“My family was stripped of their citizenship and I was a stateless refugee according to my naturalization certificate. So, I come from a stateless refugee family and I am proud of that. After naturalization process my first full citizenship is a citizenship of the United States of America that I currently hold. I was raised in Brooklyn, New York and I do not have any family in the region of Ukraine, Russia, or any other former Soviet Union state. The only places that I have my family are the United States of America and Germany, nowhere else.”
This is why Stern’s claims are baseless at its core because H.E. Firer is an American citizen, naturalised in the United States of America where he was a successful businessman, building many successful enterprises, including Unified Payments, a payment processing company which was later acquired by NASDAQ-listed Net Element.
H.E. Firer got his Grenadian citizenship somewhere between 2014 and 2015 and was appointed Ambassador to Russia in 2016 and has been serving in that capacity ever since. “I was like, why doesn’t Grenada have an Embassy in Russia?” he asked. He added: “I don’t know why I said that, shortly thereafter we opened the Embassy of Grenada in Moscow, becoming the only fully-resident diplomatic mission from CARICOM and OECS to the Russian Federation. This wasn’t done because I have any business dealings in Russia or have any family in Russia. I was just fascinated with exploring new ventures for the country in an effort to promote Grenada, five years later we are still the only diplomatic mission of the CARICOM, in the Russian Federation. We’re the only embassy of CARICOM in the Russian Federation, and the CIS.”
As for the lawsuit against Stern and Tactical Rabbit, H.E. Firer said: “I am fortunate enough to have resources to go all the way and I am not only pursuing it, I’m taking it personally, because this gentleman has written an Amazon.com book about me, and he’s created a completely fictitious story which goes beyond anyone’s imagination.
“I refute every single statement that this Mr. Stern has made, he’s not fit to stand as a US senator. I have sued him personally and I have sued his entity as well as filed an injunction with the court to prohibit him from even mentioning my name. There is a court hearing in June. As God as my witness, I am prepared to not only go all the way I’m prepared to spend every single dime that I have to defend my name.”