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]
Shahal: Police report shows PM met with alleged Russian gangsterJerusalem Post
by MICHAL YUDELMANTEL AVIV (November 24) - Labor MK Moshe Shahal said yesterday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met the controversial businessman Gregory Lushansky, believed to be one of the heads of the so-called Russian mafia, in the summer of 1995.
Shahal, the former internal security minister, who based his statement on an intelligence report from June 1995, said that Internal Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani was not telling the truth when he denied that such a meeting took place.
The meeting, Shahal said, was arranged by Industry and Trade Minister Natan Sharansky, who had ties with Lushansky.
Both Netanyahu's and Sharansky's spokesmen denied such a meeting took place. Netanyahu's media spokesman Shai Bazak said the matter had been checked again by the police this week.
"Repeatedly it turns out that MK Shahal's fabrications are incorrect, and this proves the chronic lack of credibility from which he suffers," Bazak said yesterday.
Sharansky's spokesman Roman Polonsky said Sharansky had met with Lushansky several times, but not with Netanyahu present, and that Sharansky had not set up any meeting between them. He also denied Lushansky contributed any money to Yisrael Ba'aliya.
Israel Radio said yesterday that according to the police, Sharansky had arranged such a meeting, but there is no proof that it actually took place. Intelligence sources assume the meeting of the three men took place either in the Knesset or in Netanyahu's home, the radio said.
In an interview on Channel 1's Game of the Week, Shahal said the intelligence report notes that Lushansky is interested in penetrating the Israeli political system by contributing funds - in the millions of dollars according to intelligence estimates - to political figures in Israel, Shahal said.
Lushansky's name does not appear in the list of 33 alleged Russian mafia leaders compiled by the police and passed on to the Interior Ministry.
Shahal said that intelligence agencies in the West and eastern Europe warned Israel of Lushansky's attempts to penetrate Israel's political system, following such attempts in Russia in connection with Yeltsin's campaign.
Lushansky was a senior KGB agent in the 1970s, and employs at least one person who was in a senior position in Soviet intelligence. He owns a company called Nordex, which deals with almost all commercial fields, including arms.
Shahal said the American intelligence agencies are keenly interested in Lushansky due to his reported connections with illegal organizations, and meetings he attended.
Meretz leader Yossi Sarid is demanding Kahalani clarify whether or not Netanyahu met Lushansky.
Sarid referred Kahalani to a top secret document in the police intelligence unit's investigations branch, dated June 18, 1995, in which Sarid said the answer could be found.
Meanwhile, Likud Knesset faction chairman MK Michael Eitan plans to ask the Knesset's Ethics Committee to investigate Shahal's charges and take action against him if they prove unfounded.
Sunday, November 24, 1996(Liat Collins contributed to this report.)
http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/24.Nov.1996/news/news_main_3.html
Thanks for the ping! Good catch.
I'm curious about the result of this 'keen interest'
Was not Loutchansky also a close confidante and trusted advisor to the Clinton administration's Russian "specialist", Algore? If memory serves, significant loot from specious Russian sources also ended up in the "Algore for President" coffers.
Michael Maher and I each have a source archived citing the Geneva chief prosecutor having said Safra was killed for cooperating with the FBI re the laundering of $4.8 billion in IMF loans to Russia through his Republic Bank.
Lucy said she'd spoken to the man and says he now denies having said it. She said it does not mean he did not say it; it means he now denies having said it.
With these people if you say the wrong thing you could be sued or "asphyxiated".
Here's that nice round sum in a soup with Bush accusing, Gore scoffing, "Bullsh!t", and Chernomyrdin threatening to sue--
While Washington Denies Any Problem, Swiss Probe "Missing" $4.8 Billion Loan To Russia
Pacific News Service, October 16, 2000
By Lucy Komisar
EDITOR'S NOTE: Washington denies any problem, as does the International Monetary Fund. But Russians who should know are sure that a $4.8 billion loan never reached its destination. They have been joined recently by Swiss prosecutors who are equally skeptical. PNS contributor Lucy Komisar is a freelance journalist who, sponsored by PNS, spent three months in Russia on a U.S. National Research Council grant to investigate the impact of offshore bank and corporate secrecy.
What really happened to the $4.8 billion?
In his second debate with Al Gore, George W. Bush claimed that some of the $4.8 billion loaned to Russia by the International Monetary Fund in August 1998 to prop up the ruble had ended up in the pockets of former Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Denials came quickly from Chernomyrdin, the IMF, and the Gore campaign -- some citing an August 1999 report by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers saying the loan had been accounted for with no evidence of theft. The IMF insists the Central Bank used the money as intended.
In Russia, such defenses are widely discounted. As Kim Iskyan, a vice-president of Renaissance Capital brokerage in Moscow, says, "The problem with Price Waterhouse Coopers is it looks at just what the Central Bank gives it. It's the problem with all the accountants. Companies keep two sets of books."
The $4.8 billion was supposed to avert a financial collapse brought on by widespread stripping of Russian assets, capital flight, and looting of international loans and investments. It was purportedly given to allow major Russian banks to buy rubles and stabilize the currency.
But according to Viktor Ilyukhin, chairman of the security committee of the Duma, Russia's legislature, the money "was robbed."
"The IMF money was sent from the Bank of New York via Russia to the Frankfurt Ost-West Hendelsbank, an affiliate of the Central Bank," he said in June.
Copies of money transfers provided by an employee of the German bank implicate Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin advisor Anatoly Chubais (who now runs the national electric company), Boris Berezovsky (deputy secretary of the National Security Council in the Yeltsin administration), and former prime minister Viktor Chenomyrdin.
Ilyukhin claims to have copies of the paper trails showing $235 million went to the Bank of Sydney, was changed to pounds sterling and went to Great Britain with the help of Dyachenko.
"Another part, $1.7 billion, went to the Swiss Bank of Lausanne. Our information is that Chubais and Berezovsky were involved," Ilyukhin claimed, with a major part of that going to the Bank of New York. "In this, Chernomyrdin was involved."
Official Russian sources give "contradictory information," said Ilyukhin. "The Central Bank told us this money was used to buy securities. The Finance Ministry said that part went to the salaries of Russian government employees and part for other purposes."
Prosecutor Yuri Skuratov, who angered the Yeltsin government by repeatedly digging into scandals, confirmed that he had been given copies of requests to transfer money between companies with bank accounts in Germany and Australia. He ordered the documents checked in 1999, but never saw the investigators' report because he was fired a month after he started the inquiry.
This July, a Swiss magistrate, Laurent Kasper-Ansermet, reopened the issue saying he wanted to investigate a report that as much as $4.8 billion in IMF funds had been transferred to a Swiss bank account.
Kasper-Ansermet ordered the account documents in banks in Geneva and Ticino seized and any further deposits blocked. He, too, noted that the Price Waterhouse Coopers audit did not show how the credit had been used, telling reporters that Russian prosecutors and U.S. authorities were ignoring his requests for cooperation.
Nikolai Volkov, an investigator for the Russian prosecutor's office, arranged for a Swiss official to bring the papers to Moscow. He was fired.
A week later, Swiss officials announced that, in connection with this investigation, prosecutors seized papers from the headquarters of Runicom, which handles trades for the Russian oil company, Sibneft. Sibneft, bought at auction by Berezovsky, is controlled by his erstwhile partner, Roman Abramovich, known as "the banker" of the Yeltsin family.
The Swiss built their wealth on a banking system that promises secrecy. Ironically, American pressure persuaded them to allow penetration of secrecy in cases involving illicit funds.
Washington, the IMF, and Moscow (which has to repay the $4.8 billion loan) should be eager to recover any money that was diverted. But political interests apparently make them very reluctant to follow the money trail.
They considered using him to negotiate. Gore also made a secret deal with one Viktor Chernomyrdin to allow sales of banned technology to Iran and agreed to not tell the U.S. Congress. Gore should be in the slammer for that. As I recall, it almost became a campaign issue at the very end of the 2000 campaign but the GOP didn't have the guts to pursue it. I think it might have involved sales of weapons to Iran that could threaten an aircraft carrier.
You could say the same about 90% of the Clinton administration...
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