Free Republic

Former Israeli double agent shot dead near Putin's office Shabtai Kalmanovich, a former Israeli double agent who penetrated Golda Meir's government on behalf of the KGB, has been shot dead in Moscow. By Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem Published: 7:00AM GMT 03 Nov 2009 Kalmanovich, who later became a prominent businessman and allegedly had links with the Russian mafia, died after an unidentified gunman fired at least 20 shots into his chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benz. Mr Kalmanovich's driver was seriously wounded in the incident. /snip After becoming an Israeli citizen, he joined the Israeli Labour Party, was...

Prominent businessman killed in Moscow - 2 10:01 | 07/ 02/ 2008 (Expands quote in para 3, adds details in paras 6-7) MOSCOW, February 7 (RIA Novosti) - A prominent businessman was killed in Moscow last night in what investigators believe was a contract killing, a police officer said on Thursday. Yevgeny Chivilikhin, 57, head of the Moscow Guild of Markets and Fairs and a co-founder of the Timiryazevsky trade center, was gunned down near his house in the north of the Russian capital at about 9 p.m. Moscow time on Wednesday. "An unknown man fired several pistol shots at...

Gore's, Talbott's Red Russian roots How they 'Hammer'-ed out Washington-Moscow policy Posted: October 3, 2000 Loutchansky's name surfaced again last year, when the Washington Post revealed that first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's two brothers, Tony Rodham and Hugh Rodham, were involved in a $118 million scheme to grow and export hazelnuts in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Their partner in the venture was Aslan Abashidze, who said his financial adviser was Loutchansky. Abashidze is a reputed member of a Russian organized crime family.The Rodham brothers at first balked and then agreed to national security adviser Sandy Berger's request that...

Middle East: A supporter of the U.N. tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister is himself murdered. Those who would talk to Syria have a few bodies to step over. We recently applauded the U.N.-ordered establishment of an international tribunal to try those responsible for the assassination of Rafik Hariri. He and 19 others were killed Feb. 14, 2005, when a massive bomb blast tore apart the car carrying the popular prime minister.

LOS ANGELES (AP) Federal investigators are again searching a Northern California reservoir where investigators several years ago found the bodies of five Los Angeles-area victims of an alleged Russian mob scheme, authorities said Wednesday. The murders in 2001 and 2002 were tied to an apparent kidnapping-for-ransom scheme. Five men and one woman with roots in the former Soviet Union were arrested on federal charges in the case and a seventh suspect remains at large, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. The FBI has been searching the New Melones Reservoir in the central Sierra Nevada...

Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - Members of a Russian-Armenian organized crime ring, including six suspects from the San Fernando Valley, have been charged with plotting to smuggle $2.5 million in black-market military weapons into the United States, federal officials said Tuesday. The suspects sold the weapons -- including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and other Russian military weapons -- to an FBI informant who posed as an arms trafficker with connections to al-Qaida, officials said. Although the weapons are of the type that homeland-security experts fear could be used by terrorists, officials said the suspects were smuggling the arms...

KIROVSK, Murmanskaya Oblast - The 30,000 inhabitants of this Arctic town in the middle of the vast Kola Peninsula pride themselves on being happy and hospitable. There are reasons for this: For an industrial town, the multicolored buildings look refreshingly pristine and the view is panoramic, especially this time of year, when the sun always hangs in the sky, except for an occasional dip behind the barren and breathtaking Khibiny mountains. But life hasn't always been so idyllic. Like hundreds of other outcroppings in Stalin's gulag system, Kirovsk was designed as a labor camp of death and detainment. It is...