Feds investigating potential commercial use at Russia sites, including Glen Cove mansion

The U.S. State Department is reviewing whether Russian diplomatic property in Glen Cove has been used for commercial purposes, which if true could affect its tax-exempt and diplomatic immunity status.

Lyuks Express Inc. appears on databases maintained by Dun & Bradstreet and LexisNexis with multiple addresses at Russian Federation properties, including the country’s Killenworth Mansion in Glen Cove, its Upper East Side Manhattan property and a Russian diplomatic compound on West 255th Street in the Bronx.

It is categorized as a trucking company, Lisette Kwong, spokeswoman for Dun & Bradstreet, wrote in an email Monday. She also wrote that the service did not know the "specific data source" that led Lyuks Express Inc. to be listed in their database because they track thousands of sources and the record was created "long ago."

Dun & Bradstreet "was unable to verify that the company has active operations with current business activity," the email also stated.

Foreign missions that purchase or lease property are required to state in writing to the U.S. State Department that they will not be used for commercial purposes or to acknowledge that if the property is used for commercial purposes that "the mission understands that such use deprives the area used for such purposes of both its inviolability status and eligibility for exemption from property taxation," according to the department website.

Inviolability is a form of diplomatic immunity that prevents, among other things, diplomatic properties from being entered or searched by the host country.

"The Department has no record of a request from the Russian Government to use any of their diplomatic or consular properties in the United States for commercial purposes," a U.S. State Department spokesperson wrote Friday in an email. "In response to the information [Newsday] provided, which we were previously unaware of, the Department is actively reviewing this matter."

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The Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations did not respond to an email query or answer phone calls Monday.

The Glen Cove mansion on Dosoris Lane is a foreign embassy property and received an exemption last year on its Nassau County taxes of $18,354, according to Nassau’s property records website.

Accurint, a LexisNexis database, also showed the company at other locations, including one matching the street address for the shuttered Russian compound in Upper Brookville. Two other locations were in Rego Park, Queens, and on Mosholu Avenue in the Bronx. No such business was listed in the Rego Park building’s lobby, and the phone at the Mosholu Avenue location was disconnected.

The company is not registered with the New York’s Department of State.

LexisNexis did not respond Monday to Newsday’s inquiries.