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.)
Suspicions, too, have been raised about nuclear smuggling to rogue states like Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Well, well, well. The press openly MOCKED President Bush when he named the "Axis of Evil". The media said North Korea had nothing to do with Iran and Iraq. Looks like there was a connection where Nordex was concerned.