California professor partnered with controversial pot investor. Now he’s in trouble

A University of California professor could face disciplinary action after partnering with a Ukrainian-born businessman who has invested in Sacramento’s cannabis industry and who faces federal charges for allegedly laundering foreign campaign money, university officials said Wednesday.

The professor, Dr. Rajvir Dahiya, teaches urology at UC San Francisco, works as a research scientist at the federal Department of Veterans Affairs and is chairman of the Defense Department’s medical research program in prostate, breast and ovarian cancer.

The university said Dahiya failed to disclose his involvement in a business called Oasis Venture LLC, which is trying to develop a marijuana farm near Livermore. The spokeswoman said this was a “clear violation.”

“The University of California has strict rules that govern how faculty can engage in outside professional activities,” UCSF said in a statement emailed to The Sacramento Bee. “Any faculty member who wishes to have an executive or managerial position outside the University must first obtain the permission of the chancellor. Dr. Dahiya did not report his involvement with Oasis Venture to the University. This is a clear violation of the University’s policies, and we are taking appropriate action.”

It wasn’t clear what sort of action Dahiya could face. He has not responded to a request for comment.

The professor joined Oasis Venture well before its lead partner, Andrey Kukushkin, got into legal problems. Kukushkin is one of four men indicted last October on charges of funneling foreign campaign money to political candidates and Nevada and other states in an effort to gain approval for legalized pot businesses.

One of his fellow defendants is Lev Parnas, whose alleged efforts with Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to find dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden formed the basis of the impeachment case against the president. All four men have pleaded innocent to the campaign finance charges. Parnas also recorded a conversation he had with Trump discussing U.S. cannabis policy.

Oasis was founded in 2017 but Dahiya’s name didn’t show up until last March on the annual registration papers filed with the California secretary of state’s office. The company has been talking to the federal government since 2017 about supplying products for a five-year medical-marijuana research project at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

A V.A. spokesman told Politico that the research project has been rejected.

But the third partner in Oasis, Chuk Campos, said earlier this week that he believed the veterans agency was still reviewing the proposal. The project would “do a lot of good for a lot of people,” Campos said. “Its focus is cancer.” The cannabis plants would be grown on a ranch controlled by Oasis in Livermore, east of San Francisco.

Although California and several other states have legalized marijuana for recreational use, the federal government still regards it as an illegal, Schedule 1 narcotic. Only one facility, at the University of Mississippi, is permitted by the federal government to conduct research on cannabis.

The Sacramento Bee reported last fall that Kukushkin, who lives in San Francisco, is a significant investor in Sacramento’s legalized marijuana scene. He co-owns the Twelve Hour Care cannabis dispensary on Fruitridge Road with Garib Karapetyan, a Sacramento man who dominates the city’s cannabis industry.

Karapetyan is part-owner of eight of the 30 storefront locations allowed in the city in spite of regulations that were supposed to discourage such concentration. The city is investigating.

Kukushkin and Karapetyan also are partners in a company developing a home-delivery cannabis business from a building near Twelve Hour Care, and in two management companies: KKMC Management LLC and the now-defunct Legacy Botanical Company LLC.

A third partner in the management companies is a wealthy Russian-born businessman named Andrey Muraviev, who was revealed in court papers as the source of secret money behind a Bay Area marijuana company involving Kukushkin. That company is separate from Oasis Venture.

This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 11:51 AM.