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Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who has been indicted for bribery, explored a venture to redevelop New York’s Drake Hotel with Paul Manafort (above) that never went forward. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Judge declined to toss out racketeering case against Ukrainian Manafort associate

A federal judge in Chicago has refused to throw out a foreign bribery and racketeering case against a Ukrainian oligarch with ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

U.S. prosecutors indicted the Ukrainian businessman, Dmitry Firtash, in 2013, accusing him of leading a scheme to pay bribes to Indian officials in connection with a titanium mining project in that country.

Firtash was arrested in Austria on the U.S. indictment the next year and has been free on bail of about $140 million as he fights extradition in Austrian courts.

Firtash’s lawyers have also been challenging the American case in U.S. District Court in Chicago, but Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer issued a 39-page decision this week rejecting a variety of claims that the charges against Firtash are legally flawed.

Prosecutors alleged that the plan called for selling the titanium to Chicago-based Boeing, but the natural gas magnate claimed the case against him lacked evidence that he actually did or directed any activity in the court district where he was charged.

Pallmeyer disagreed, saying the goal of selling to Boeing made her court an appropriate location to hear the case.

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“Venue is proper in the district where an overt act was ‘intended to have an effect,’” she wrote in her opinion dated Friday and released Saturday. “The Indictment here need only allege that the charged conspiracy was intended to have an effect in the Northern District of Illinois. It does so.”

Pallmeyer, a Clinton appointee, also rejected other arguments by Firtash that the indictment improperly seeks to apply U.S. law beyond U.S. borders.

About a decade ago, Firtash and Manafort explored a venture to redevelop New York’s Drake Hotel, but the project never went forward.

There’s no indication Manafort was involved in the titanium venture. Manafort is currently serving a 7½-year prison sentence after being convicted on a series of felony charges brought by then-special counsel Robert Mueller, including tax fraud, failing to report foreign bank accounts and conspiring to lobby on behalf of Ukraine’s government in the U.S. without registering with the Justice Department.

Prosecutors have also accused Firtash of ties to Russian organized crime, although no such charge appears in the indictment. He has denied any such connection.

Firtash’s U.S.-based attorneys, Dan Webb and Lanny Davis, said in a statement: “Motions to dismiss before trial are almost never granted. The court ruling here states only that the US prosecutors have jurisdiction to prosecute. It says nothing about guilt or innocence. We remain confident that Mr. Firtash, who is not accused in the indictment of paying any bribes and has never visited or done business in the United States, is innocent of these charges.”

A final ruling from the Austrian Supreme Court on Firtash’s extradition is expected next week.