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Cloaks and Daggers
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30 October 1996
Topics of the day:
1. NORDEX and Grigori Loutchansky
2. CLOAKS-AND-DAGGERS Digest - 26 Oct 1996 to 27 Oct 1996
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Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 21:35:50 GMT
From: Wayne McGuire
Subject: NORDEX and Grigori Loutchansky
[Forwarded from a newsgroup:]
--- BEGIN ---
Suspected Nuclear-Dealer Attended Clinton Fund-Raiser
By Christopher Ruddy>
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW 10/30/96
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.
--- END ---
--
Wayne McGuire
http://www.cybercom.net/~wmcguire
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Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 15:43:14 -0800
From: William Upton-Knittle
Subject: Re: CLOAKS-AND-DAGGERS Digest - 26 Oct 1996 to 27 Oct 1996
Guess I'd better confirm my interest in continuing to receive this digest so
I don't miss any issues.
bill upton-knittle
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End of CLOAKS-AND-DAGGERS Digest - 29 Oct 1996 to 30 Oct 1996
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