Posted on 06/20/2002 11:51:54 PM PDT by kattracks
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:54:52 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
MILAN, Italy
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
This is big. These guys have been untouchable. Col. Yair Klein is being held in Sierra Leone, Leonid Minin in Italy. Wonder if they are ratting everyone out. Alexander Angert, Semyon Yukovich Mogilevich and Arkadi Gaydamak might be involved. Anyone know if the names of all those arrested is available?
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Ah, yes. The same Grigori Loutchansky who was an honored guest of Sinkmaster's at the White House. The Russian Mafia scum dealing in black market nukes. The one on the wanted list around the world.
Then there is the matter of Grigori Loutchansky, the founder of NORDEX -- a firm based in Moscow and Vienna that U.S. intelligence has linked to "Russian criminal activity" -- who was invited not once, but twice, to meet with President Clinton for private fund-raising dinners. Exposes in Time Magazine and other American publications, indicate that NORDEX was created by the ancien Soviet regime for the purpose of earning and laundering hard currency needed to support Russian intelligence activities in the West. It is also reputed to be engaged in smuggling operations involving nuclear materials and missiles.
The Bottom Line
While it is not clear whether Mr. Loutchansky (through NORDEX or one of its cut-outs), like Mr. Huang and Mr. Cabrera, proved to be a source of large, dubious (if not positively illegal) campaign contributions for Mr. Clinton's benefit(3), one thing should be self-evident: Individuals who there is reason to believe may be engaged in activities like nuclear proliferation, drug-trafficking or associating with personnel of hostile intelligence agencies have no business being associated with the President of the United States. Such associations can only serve to legitimate such individuals, and possibly create pernicious quids pro quo for services rendered to him politically.
What did clinton know, and when did he know it?
Jesse Helms: . ."the first lady's two brothers were involved in a nut-growing venture with a crooked Georgian warlord, whose goal is to overthrow our friend and ally, President Eduard Shevardnadze. Worse still, the Rodham brothers' partner in this venture was a man named Grigory Loutchansky, and we'll hear about him later today, a known organized-crime figure involved in the smuggling of nuclear materials.Now, the question is inevitable: Why would the Rodhams do business with a thug like Loutchansky? A better question, I guess, is why wouldn't they? After all, Loutchansky was invited to attend a 1995 fundraiser you know where, and he had his picture with the president in 1993.
And I guess that's the one over there. Loutchansky was invited to that fundraiser the same year the president went to Moscow and called for, quote, "an all-out battle to create a market based on law, and not lawlessness." In uttering that worthy phrase, while simultaneously consorting with a corrupt figure like Loutchansky, surely it sends the wrong signal to President Yeltsin and Russian leaders of today.
Now then, how can the United States ask Russian government officials not to consort with such criminals at home, when our own president and vice president appear to have done so? "
Suspected nuclear dealer attended Clinton fund-raiser
By Christopher Ruddy
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
- WASHINGTON - Why did President Bill Clinton meet with Grigori Loutchansky, a man whose company the current CIA director has told Congress is "an organization associated with Russian criminal activity"?
That question has a number of national security experts who are concerned about Loutchansky and NORDEX - an international company which has been linked to the smuggling of nuclear materials - wondering.
In October of 1993, Loutchansky was invited to the U.S. to attend a private fund-raising dinner for the Democratic National Committee where Loutchansky met with the President. The meeting was memorialized in the Latvian newspaper SM Today on Nov. 12, 1993. In 1995, though Loutchansky was still a priority concern for U.S. intelligence, he was again invited by the DNC to attend another fund-raising dinner with the president.
Disclosures about Loutchansky come on the heels of questions about dealings the president and the DNC have had with businessmen from Indonesia, South Korea and Taiwan. Earlier this month, Republicans sharply criticized the president for meeting with a Miami drug dealer after he had made a $20,000 donation to Democratic coffers.
NORDEX CONNECTIONS
TIME magazine, in an expose on Loutchansky only three months ago, reported that NORDEX, based in Vienna and Moscow, has been "one of the top intelligence targets in the West".
Since NORDEX was formed in 1989 to trade Russian commodities and natural resources with the West, allegations have surfaced that the firm has been involved in money laundering, narcotics trafficking, arms deals, and other Russian Mafia criminal activities. Loutchansky, a former professor and Latvian university official who once served a two-year term in prison for embezzlement, has not been charged with any crimes in Russia or elsewhere since he founded NORDEX. According to a secret German intelligence report, NORDEX was created by the old Soviet regime "with the aim of bringing foreign currency accumulated by the KGB and top Communist Party officials into the West," as well as a means to continue earning hard currency for Russian intelligence organizations.
Domestic intelligence sources believe numerous such companies were created for that purpose, but NORDEX, with its $3 billion in annual business, appears to be the largest such concern operating in the West.
NORDEX also may be the most dangerous. In the spring of 1995, Ukrainian officials in Kiev inspected a NORDEX-owned cargo plane that had emanated in North Korea and was destined for Iraq. The aircraft was carrying SCUD missile warheads.
Suspicions, too, have been raised about nuclear smuggling to rogue states like Iran, Iraq and North Korea. According to TIME, in the past three years the National Security Agency has "found indications" that NORDEX has been "engaged" on the black market with nuclear materials.
Christopher Story, editor of the London-based Soviet Analyst - the one-time British Foreign office newsletter on Russian matters - told the Tribune-Review that sources in British intelligence believe NORDEX is "a rapidly proliferating amoeba or cancer, constantly replicating and mutating into a network of business fronts engaged in enterprises ultimately controlled by Russian intelligence." NORDEX controls more than 100 Russian firms and has more than three dozen businesses in the West.
SECOND INVITATION
In an unpublished, extensive interview with TIME magazine, excerpts of which the Tribune-Review has obtained, Loutchansky explained how he ended up meeting with Clinton: "I was invited by a friend of mine - Sam Domb - he was a trustee (sic) of the Democratic National Committee - to take part in a dinner which was given by Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore and 20 Senators ... in October 1993. It was in Washington in some museum. ... I was invited as an outstanding Jewish businessman.
Loutchansky went on to say he spoke privately with the president for about two minutes, discussing the "problems of nuclear missiles in the Ukraine." Loutchansky also told the Jerusalem Report he "agreed to a request from the president to deliver a private message to the leader of the Ukraine."
New York businessman Sam Domb told the Tribune-Review he has no idea who Loutchansky was, and had never met him before the dinner. Domb, apparently agitated by the call, had no explanation as to why he was photographed with Loutchansky and Clinton, or why he was previously quoted extensively in a Russian emigre newspaper praising Loutchansky.
According to Federal Election Commission records, in the months immediately following the October, 1993, Washington dinner, Domb donated $90,000 to the DNC. In the past three years he has forked over $155,000 to the committee.
Loutchansky has stated he never donated any money to the Democratic Party or the Clinton-Gore campaign. Federal law prohibits donations by foreign individuals or companies to political candidates or parties. Sometimes foreigners try to skirt the law by having American citizens make donations on their behalf. There is no evidence that has occurred here.
But Loutchansky has a track record in Russia and elsewhere of showering officials with money and gifts for favors and access. For instance TIME located a dummy Swiss company owned by NORDEX called Dorotel AG which, according to a NORDEX official, was nothing more than a bank account "used to make discreet payments for friends of NORDEX. ..."
Calls to the Democratic National Committee for comment as to why Loutchansky was invited to a fund-raising dinner for the president, and why Loutchansky, according to a source familiar with the case, received a letter from the president thanking him for his support, went unreturned.
Also unexplained is the invitation Loutchansky received just last year from the Democratic National Committee for a VIP dinner with Clinton. "Dear Mr. Loutchansky," wrote DNC finance director Richard Sullivan, "I cordially invite you to have dinner with President Clinton on Tuesday, July 11, 1995, at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C."
Loutchansky told the Jerusalem Report he did not go to that event because he feared U.S. officials would not allow him to enter the country. Already Loutchansky has been barred from Britain and Canada.
Soviet Analyst editor Story suggested Loutchansky's meeting and invitations to see Clinton were "nothing short of scandal."
"It's preposterous to believe Loutchansky came once to meet the president, and was invited again without giving some benefit, or receiving some in kind," Story said.
(I think this article had a grainy picture of Loutchansky and Clinton together when it was originally published.)
It must be hell to live as a fugutive, under constant scrutiny, with their reputations in the trash. How do they sleep at night. It's just not worth it!
Now Oleg is on the run somewhere in Russia and Igor is in a French jail, suspected of running the biggest money-laundering operation in history. It spanned Europe, involving deals with the great Siberian railway, Chechen rebels, and a small company based in the Somerset town of Taunton.
Italian authorities suspect as much as $9 billion of Russian mafia money was laundered in six years by a network run by Igor and Oleg Berezovskii. The proceeds of drugs, arms and human trafficking were traced from Russia to New York and around six European countries, in a two-year operation headed by Rome's anti-mafia 'supercops'.
Last week 50 people were arrested in Operation Spiderweb and authorities are now piecing together a complicated paper trail, expecting more arrests to follow.
Investigators are also examining the role of a now defunct British company, Florida Trading, based in Taunton. Italian police say it received funds from one of the key laundering companies in New York, and passed them on to an Italian firm involved in the scam.
Anthony Shiffers, who said he was asked to incorporate Florida Trading and become its nominal director for an eastern European client in 1999, said: 'We have had no contact with our client for years and in the end just gave up. The client did not comply with our requests and neither settled our fees so we arranged for the company to be struck off.'
He declined to name his client, citing industry codes of confidentiality. There is no evidence Shiffers was involved in any impropriety, or that Florida Trading knowingly received the proceeds of criminal activities. Shiffers has referred the matter to the money-laundering officer of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales.
Police say the laundering scam started as early as 1996. Initially, the money was sent from two banks in Russia to accounts in the Bank of New York, registered to a company called Benex Worldwide. It was then sent on to accounts and companies in Europe, before being returned to Russia 'clean'. The director of Benex, a Russian called Peter Berlin, was arrested in 1998.
During a two-year investigation Italian police noticed that dozens of companies across Europe were transferring small amounts of money to each other in payment for work that never happened. The transfers happened every day, totalling billions of euros. The money was eventually sent back to a host of companies in Russia with links to the Ismolskaya and Soltsnevo crime families.
Investigators estimate as much as $9bn could have been laundered since 1996. 'This makes it the biggest scam of its kind,' said one investigator.
Last Monday Italian police co-ordinated an operation in seven different countries, which arrested and charged 50 people, half of whom were of Russian descent, with criminal association with the intent to launder money. Their assets have also been frozen.
Igor Berezovsky was on a quiet break in Rennes, Brittany, when the police smashed down his hotel-room door. His company, Kama Trade, had an exclusive address on the Champs Elysée in Paris. But investigators became suspicious when they learned that 10 companies were registered at the same office. One of them, Temirtrans, was allegedly involved in a large contract to help rebuild Russia's Siberian railway. Others were involved in cosmetics or clothing deals. In the seaside resort of Rimini, in Italy, a company called Prima SRL, owned by Oleg Berezovskii, arranged contracts with companies all over Europe. Investigators focused their activity on these companies.
Two Russian nationals were arrested in Monte Carlo two weeks ago. Their bank accounts, holding $8 million, were frozen. The Italians then began plotting Monday's mass arrests.
But Oleg Berezovskii slipped the net. He was on a trip to Russia when the arrests occurred, and Italian police have asked Interpol for help in tracking him down.
Investigators are celebrating the arrest of another Russian, Andreas Marissov, who they regard as an 'important player' in the scam. They suspect him of providing funds and other support to rebel groups in Chechnya. 'He is the most important arrest,' said Luigi Rinella of the Italian police.
Is this true?
You may be needed here. Backhoe - do you have the picture of the Russian arms/drugstrading mafia leader in the Clinton White House? I didn't remember the guy's name but evidently it is this communist thug mafioso.
Surely somebody has kept those White House coffee/photo for cash picture threads/links?
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