On June 9, 2000, the popular Vancouver radio program CKNW in Canada
had a one-hour interview with author Robert I.
Friedman. He was
promoting
his new book, "Red Mafiya: How The Russian Mob Has Invaded America."
He described how
the Jewish Mafia ballooned in Brighton Beach, New York
during the 1970s and 1980s when leaders such as Andropov, were emptying
the
prisons in USSR of Russian Jewish criminals who then emigrated to
Brighton
Beach in America. Later, the extortion rackets
expanded into
multi-billion dollar
operations into other cities such as Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco
and
Canadian
cities such as Toronto and Vancouver, when they teamed up with
the Russian Mafia. Friedman gave examples of the Mob's ties
to sports
(10 players in the NHL including Pavel Bure, Fetisov, etc.; Joe Namath
and
his New York restaurant which
was frequented by the Mafia) and
politicians
including Robert Kaplan, Canada's former cabinet minister responsible
for
CSIS
and the RCMP, Paul Martin, Canada's cabinet finance minister, etc.
Money laundering examples included TSE=92s YBM Magnex
and Bank of New
York. And there was the "Money Plane" operation, with regular almost
daily
flights leaving
New York for Moscow with sometimes $1 billion payloads
in
new $100 Federal Reserve notes arranged by the Republic National
Bank.
In
Moscow, the billions are deposited in the Russian Central Bank for
further
distribution to the Russian
Mafia -controlled banks. Friedman agrees
that the
money benefits the Russian Mafia and not the general population. He
also
named Mafia names, familiar ones being Mogilevich, Ivankov, Sliva,
Elson,
Sigalov, etc. and described how
the Russian Mafia placed a hit contract
on
his life. Friedman is one brave and excellent investigative journalist.
Below
is an excerpt from his Red Mafiya book (available at amazon.com
and chapters.com) dealing with the Russian Mafia in Israel.
Friedman=92s
article =93The Most Dangerous Mobster in the World=94 is available at:
http://ukar.org/friedm01.shtmlStefan Lemieszewski
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------
Red
Mafiya: How The Russian Mob Has Invaded America
By Robert I. Friedman
Of all the nations where the Russian mob
has established
a presence, none has been more deeply compromised
than the State of Israel, America's staunchest ally
in the
volatile Middle East. More than 800,000 Russian Jews have
made aliyah or settled in Israel since the first massive
wave
of immigration in the 1970s. The Russians took advantage
of Israel's most sacred law--the Right of Return, which
guarantees
Jews the right to return to their ancestral
home land, where they would receive citizenship and live as
free men and
women outside the odious yoke of anti-Semitism.
"The Russians are a blessing," said Israel's top political
columnist
Nachum Barnea, who stands in public awe of
their brilliant intellectual gifts in a variety of fields.
But just as
in Brighton Beach, Russian immigration to
Israel has brought a more unwelcome element--the vor v
zakonye and their criminal
minions. Ten percent of Israel's
five million Jews are now Russian, and 10 percent of the
Russian population "is criminal,"
according to NYPD notes
of a briefing in Manhattan by Israeli police intelligence
official Brigadier General Dan Ohad.
"There
is not a major Russian organized crime figure who
we are tracking who does not also carry an Israeli passport,"
says
senior State Department official Jonathan Winer. He put
the number at seventy-five, among whom are Mogilevich,
Loutchansky,
Rabinovich, and Kobzon.
Many of the mobsters who have Israeli citizenship, such
as Eduard Ivankov and Sergei Mikhailov,
are not even
Jewish. In the mid-1990s, an Israeli police sting-- code-named
Operation Romance--netted, among others,
a high-ranking
Interior Ministry official who was taking payoffs from Mikhailov
and convicted KGB spy Shabtai Kalmanovitch
to issue
passports to dozens of Russian gangsters, according to
Brigadier General Hezi Leder, the Israeli police attache
in
Washington, and classified FBI documents. (Kalmanovitch,
after serving time in an Israeli prison for treason, became
one
of Moscow's most notorious mobsters and frequently
returns to Israel.)
Russia's criminal aristocracy covets Israeli
citizenship
"because they know Israel is a safe haven for them," said
Leder. "We do not extradite citizens."
"The
Russians then use the safe haven to travel around
the world and rape and pillage," added Moody.
The country has
also remained attractive to gangsters
because "Israel is good for money laundering," explained
Leder. Under Israeli
law, banks can accept large cash
deposits with no questions asked. In one instance, a corrupt
ex-deputy prime minister
of Ukraine smuggled $300 million
of illicit cash into Israel in several suitcases, and deposited
it into a bank, as
Israeli Minister of National Security Moshe
Shahal told a gathering of intelligence heads in June 1996.
"I've watched
Russian mobsters exchange suitcases full of
cash out in the open at the Dan Hotel's swimming pool,"
laughed an American
underworld crime figure. "Israel is a
country that encourages people to come and invest money,"
said Leder. "There is
no mechanism to check the origin of
the money."
Israeli police officials estimate that Russian mobsters
have
poured more than $4 billion of dirty money into
Israel's economy, though some estimates range as high as
$20 billion.
They have purchased factories, insurance
companies, and a bank. They tried to buy the now defunct,
pro-labor Party Davar
daily newspaper, and the pro-Likud
Maariv, the nation's second largest newspaper. They have
even put together a koopa,
or a pool of money, for bribes
and other forms of mutual support. One of Leder's greatest
fears is that the Russians
will compromise Israel's security
by buying companies that work for the military-industrial
complex. The mobsters, in
fact, attempted to purchase a
gas and oil company that maintains strategic reserves for
Israel's military. "They could
go to the stock market and
buy a company that's running communications in the
military sector," he complains.
Insinuating
themselves throughout the country, Russian
dens have bought large parcels of impoverished
development towns, taking
over everything from local
charities to the town hall. For instance, Gregory Lerner, a
major Russian crime boss who
arrived in Israel with huge
amounts of money, allegedly owns everything from
fashionable restaurants to parts of several
port city
waterfronts.
"Do you know what Gregory Lerner did in Ashkelon!"
Leder asked me during an interview
in New York. "His
mother was three times in the hospital there. He bought
new medical equipment and dedicated it to
his mother! It's
the way the mobsters wash their name." They do so, he
explains, in order to build up grassroots support
and openly
influence politicians -- or even run for elective office. Leder
worries that one day three or four Russian
gangsters who
have bought their legitimacy will win Knesset seats, take
over a key committee, and be in an ideal position
to stop an
important piece of anti-crime legislation, such as a proposed
bill to criminalize money laundering.
One
of Leder's worst fears came true when Russian
gangsters handpicked several candidates to run for local
and national
offices, according to the minutes of a
classified Israeli cabinet meeting held by the Committee of
the Controller in
June 1996. And in May 1997, Israeli police
launched a probe into allegations that Lerner attempted
to bribe former Prime
Minister Shimon Peres, among
other Knesset members and cabinet ministers. The
investigation was inconclusive, however,
and no charges
were filed.*
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
*Succumbing
to persistent pressure from the Russian
government, the Israeli police finally arrested Lerner in May
1997 as he was
about to board a flight to the United States.
He was charged with attempted bribery, defrauding four Russian
banks of
$106 million, and attempting to set up a bank in Israel
to launder money for the Russian Mafiya. Lerner pleaded guilty
to
bank fraud and bribing government officials on March 22,
1998, after having fiercely maintained for months that he was
a
victim of an Israeli government plot to discredit Russian
emigre entrepreneurs.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
One
politician already ensnared in the web of organized
crime is Russian-born Natan Sharansky, the head of the
Russian Yisrael
Ba-Aliya and minister of the interior in
the government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Because
of his resistance to the
Soviet regime and his strong and
open identification with Judaism, he suffered a long,
brutal confinement in the Gulag
before international
pressure led to his release. In Israel, the charismatic
dissident was lionized by the Jewish people,
and he
became a power broker for the large and growing Russian
emigre community, whom he helped integrate into a
rigid
society that sometimes seemed jealous of the talented
new Russians.
However, Sharansky has publicly admitted that
his
party has accepted campaign contributions from NORDEX
president Grigori Loutchansky. Officials from the U.S.
Congress,
the State Department, and the CIA pleaded
with Sharansky to sever his ties to Loutchansky. "We told
Sharansky to stop
taking money from Loutchansky," says
Winer. "We told him about [Loutchansky's] MO: bribery,
influence peddling, that
he was a bridge between foreign
governments and traditional organized crime."
Sharansky simply refused, arguing
that he needed the
money to resettle the tidal wave of Russian emigres. "When
we warned Sharansky," says the congressional
investigator,
"to stop taking money from Loutchansky, he said, 'But
where am I going to put them,"' referring to the
huge influx
of Russian Jewish refugees. "'How am I going to feed them!
=46ind them jobs!"' He figures Loutchansky is
just another
source of income.
"Sharansky is very shrewd," the congressional investigator
continued. "He knows
better. It was a cynical [decision].
He did take money. Then he asked, 'Why shouldn't
I!' The CIA warned him that Loutchansky
was trying to
buy influence through him and his party for [the] Russian
Organized Crime/Russian government combine.
We told
Sharansky that Loutchansky is a major crook." (Sharansky
declined to comment.)
Ignoring all the warnings,
Sharansky introduced
Loutchansky to Benjamin Netanyahu prior to Israel's
1996 national elections. The Israeli press
reported that
Netanyahu received $1.5 million, in campaign contributions
from Loutchansky, a charge the prime minister
hotly
denied. "The Likud is corrupt, and Bibi [Netanyahu] is
disgusting," says Winer. "He's had meetings
with
Loutchansky and Kobzon -- criminals promoting their own
interests."
Kobzon's influence in Israel may exceed
that of even
Loutchansky and Mogilevich. "Kobzon has big [political]
connections in Israel," says Leder. For instance,
in January
1996, Kobzon was detained upon his arrival at Israel's Ben
Gurion International Airport "because of his ties
to the
Russian Mafiya, " Labor Party Knesset member Moshe
Shahal said in his cramped Knesset office in Jerusalem.
Shahal,
at the time the country's security minister, intended
to send the mobster back to Russia, but then the phones
started
ringing in the chambers of high government
ministries. Kobzon's friends in Israel petitioned the minister
of the interior,
the minister of transportation, and Foreign
Minister Shimon Peres, who finally ordered the airport
police to free Kobzon
and let him enter the country. Peres,
who was being pressed by the Russian ambassador, told
Shahal that he relented
to avoid a messy incident with the
Russian government. (The following year, Kobzon flew to
Israel in his private jet
to pick up Marat Balagula's eldest
daughter, who lives in Netanya, to bring her back to
Moscow to celebrate his sixtieth
birthday.)
With two decades of unimpeded growth, the Russian
Mafiya has succeeded in turning Israel into its very
own
"mini-state," in which it operates with virtual impunity.
Although many in international law enforcement believe
that
Israel is by now so compromised that its future as a
nation is imperiled, its government, inexplicably, has done
almost
nothing to combat the problem. In June 1996 Leder,
then chief of Israeli police intelligence, prepared a three-page
classified
intelligence assessment that concluded: "Russian
organized groups [had] become a strategic threat" to Israel's
existence.
He documented how they were infiltrating the
nation's business, financial, and political communities.
Shahal used the
report to brief Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin,
Shin Bet, Israel's FBI, and Mossad, and provided his own
recommendations
on how to uproot the Russian mob. Before
Rabin had a chance to act on the Plan he was assassinated
by a right-wing Jewish
religious zealot in Tel Aviv following
a peace rally. Shimon Peres subsequently set up an
intra-agency intelligence
committee on the Russian mob
after reading Leder's report, but did little else. Leder's report
was shelved by Netanyahu,
according to Shahal.
"Israel is going to have to do something," says James
Moody. "They could lose their whole country.
The mob is a
bigger threat than the Arabs."
Leder agrees: "We know how to deal with terrorist
organizations.
We know how to deal with external threats. This
is a social threat. We as a society don't know how to handle
it. It's
an enemy among us."
<end>
