(J.C. Rice)
SAD: After Evgueni Kniazev (middle) died on 9/11, wife Irina Dubenskaya (left) got $1.4 million, despite his son Dennis Vinichenko’s (bottom) claim that it was a fake union. (J.C. Rice)
It was the greenest of green-card marriages.
When Evgueni Kniazev came to the United States in 1992 from his native Russia, he hoped to become a citizen. So — at least according to his son — he paid an American $5,000 to marry him and make him a legal resident.
Then Kniazev, who worked as a facilities manager at the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center, was killed in the 9/11 terror attacks.
And his American wife, Irina Dubenskaya, collected $1.4 million from the WTC Victim Compensation Fund.
“The relationship was temporary,” fumes Dennis Vinichenko, Evgueni’s son, who says he should have gotten the money instead. “There was no wedding. There was no wedding band. It was just paper.”
Kniazev didn’t even get his green card before he was killed — it didn’t arrive until three years later.
“My father was burned alive,” Vinichenko said. “This woman was saying she was my family, and then she took all this money. She wasn’t really his wife. She was just trying to cash in.”
Dubenskaya, who today still lives in the Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, home into which she and Kniazev moved in June 2001, says that’s a lie and that the marriage was real — at least in her eyes.
“I can’t tell if that was Eugene’s original intention,” she said. “I thought we had a nice marriage. We started living the American dream life. Then he died.”
A Kniazev friend, Alexander Teperev, believes his pal entered into wedded bliss on a “50/50” basis — half so he could get a green card, and half because he and Dubenskaya got along.
“It was both,” Teperev said. “It was business, and he liked her, too.”
The financial aftermath of this particular 9/11 tragedy has never sat well with Teperev, who said Dubenskaya used the money to put her son from a previous marriage through college, but didn’t share enough of it with Kniazev’s family in Siberia.
“I didn’t like the way the money went,” he said. “Her son got to go to college for free. It wasn’t his son. I felt bad about that. The money wasn’t distributed properly.”
Dubenskaya brushed off questions about whether Kniazev paid her $5,000, instead shifting the topic to Vinichenko.
“He’s not a clean guy,” she said. “He was writing on my door — ‘Give me my money.’ I had to call the cops. He was stalking me.”
One of the few things on which stepmother and stepson do agree is that she gave him more than $35,000 of the compensation she received. And a lawyer Vinichenko hired after 9/11 said that, in a 2004 out-of-court settlement, the two agreed that Vinichenko and his sister in Russia would receive a separate sum.
“She would have technically been entitled to the whole thing, even though the marriage was a sham,” said Brian Schachter, Vinichenko’s attorney at the time. “At the time, I thought it was a decent deal.”
The amount they received totaled about $150,000 after legal fees, according to Vinichenko, who said he was pressured into the agreement when Dubenskaya threatened to sic immigration authorities on him. Vinichenko, a Russian citizen, is living in the United States illegally.
“I just had a son,” he said. “It wasn’t a good circumstance to go into court.”
And now, with the costs of parenthood mounting and his relatives in Russia in financial straits, Vinichenko said he just wants what’s rightfully his family’s.
“Money is really secondary,” he said. “But there’s real family that exists. What makes me mad is the person that took the money is claiming she’s family.”
Dubenskaya contended it’s always been about the money for her stepson.
“I have nothing to hide,” she said. “Dennis got what he was entitled [to]. I respect Eugene. I love him. I just wish he didn’t have a son like that.”