"Lawsuit charges DOJ collusion with Russian Mafia"
The Washington Weekly
November 3, 1997
A $100 million lawsuit filed in federal court today charges the Department of Justice with collusion with the Russian Mafia. The lawsuit alleges perjury, fraud, torture, and witness tampering by named officers of the U.S. government on behalf of the Russian Mafia.
The lawsuit stems from the case of Alexandre Konanykhine, a Russian banker who blew the whistle on a grand KGB scheme to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars out of the Soviet Union at the time of its collapse. The loot is still stashed in foreignbanks, some in Switzerland, and former KGB officers and Communist Party officials are protecting the secret through their new positions in the Russian Mafia and in the corrupt government of Russia.
After whistleblower Konanykhine was kidnapped by the Russian Mafia, he escaped to the United States where he thought himself protected by the legal system. Words cannot describe the horror he and his wife went through when they discovered that FBI and INS agents worked on behalf of former KGB officers in the Russian Mafia to have him returned through extralegal means to Russia. Both the FBI and the INS are part of the Justice Department.
Mr. Konanykhine fought the deportation in court, and after a long legal battle against the Justice Department he was released from custody last July. During the case, reported in the August 25 and September 1 issues of the Washington Weekly, the horrible and illegal methods employed by the U.S. government against Mr. Konanykhine and his wife were revealed. Presiding judge T.S. Ellis, III, found the evidence "disturbing." So much so, that on August 26 he ordered the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate official wrongdoing.
Justice Department investigations of itself are notorious for finding "no credible evidence" of wrongdoing by government officials, so a more successful venue may be a lawsuit filed today in federal court by Alexandre Konanykhine.
Mr. Konanykhine charges officers of the Washington District Office of the INS, including District Director William Carroll, Assistant District Director James Goldman and District Counsel Eloise Rosas with conspiracy with one Lt. Colonel Volevodz of the Russian Military Procuracy to commit illegal extradition of him and his wife to Russia on behalf of the Russian Mafia.
Said officials are alleged to have conducted the following illegal acts:
- perjury;
- fraud on the Court;
- fraud upon the United States;
- conspiracy to defraud the United States;
- giving conflicting testimony on separate occasions as to the same matter;
- conspiracy to kill, maim, or injure persons in a foreign country;
- torture (as defined in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2340);
- combination to injure other in their reputation, business or profession;
- tampering with witnesses;
- retaliating against witnesses;
- attempt to commit murder;
- deprivation of civil rights under color of law, including the false arrest and imprisonment;
- search and seizure without warrant;
- false publications;
- disclosure of confidential information;
- breach of the confidentiality provisions of 8 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(b).
HOW HIGH DOES IT GO?
The conspiracy is not limited to these named officials of the Clinton administration, however. During the court hearing in July, a witness recounted that Eloise Rosas had told him that "the INS got instructions from the top to cooperate with this case."
How high is "the top" and what motive does the Clinton administration have to cooperate with the Russian Mafia and former KGB officers? Could it be part of a quid pro quo involving Clinton campaign contributions from criminal individuals such as Grigory Loutchansky?
Alexandre Konanykhine explains that the stakes are on an entirely different scale. "It's not about how much Russians gave to the Democrats, it's about how much the Democrats gave to Russians. Billions have been spent to keep Yeltsin in the Kremlin - it now precludes the discussion of whether Yeltsin has built a Mafiocracy instead of a Democracy," he tells the Washington Weekly. "Big corporations which benefit from business in Russia want stability there even if it means stability of a criminal government."
Second, Konanykhine sees himself as a pawn in the globalization efforts of the FBI. "Director Freeh wants to make the FBI a global organization with presence in each and every country, and the overhyped success of the close and productive friendship with the corrupt Russian government is the linchpin for this globalization of FBI," he says.
Third, Konanykhine sees a failure of the Clinton administration and the mainstream media to recognize the villains. "Some officials still sincerely believe that Russia is a newborn democracy and that the KGB successor agencies are now the best friends of the US government. (An) excusable mistake if you recall that Gorbachev, Perestroika, Democracy, the crushed Berlin Wall, etc. was praised everywhere, but the story of the Russian Criminal Revolution of 92-93 has never made its way to the international Press."
A PATTERN OF RELATED CASES
Lest anyone should believe that the Konanykhine case is just one of those famous Clinton administration "bureaucratic snafus," Mr. Konanykhine points to the parallel case of Jouri Nesterov, a legal U.S. resident since 1994, who is now fighting a similar deportation to Russia.
Mr. Nesterov claims that he played a small part in a secret and politically explosive scheme by the Russian military to sell sophisticated arms to China, and that most of the proceeds, including his promised fee, were pocketed by high-level officials and allied Russian Mobsters. Those people, he says, now want him back -- to silence him.
And again, incredibly, the Clinton administration is helping Russian Mobsters masquerading as government officials to silence Nesterov.Published in the Nov. 3, 1997 issue of The Washington Weekly
Copyright 1997 The Washington Weekly