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:
(1) perjury;
(2) fraud on the Court;
(3) fraud upon the United States;
(4) conspiracy to defraud the United States;
(5) giving conflicting testimony on separate occasions as to the same matter;
(6) conspiracy to kill, maim, or injure persons in a foreign country;
(7) torture (as defined in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2340);
(8) combination to injure other in their reputation, business or profession;
(9) tampering with witnesses;
(10) retaliating against witnesses;
(11) attempt to commit murder;
(12) deprivation of civil rights under color of law, including the false arrest and
imprisonment;
(13) search and seizure without warrant;
(14) false publications;
(15) disclosure of confidential information;
(16) 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 (http://www.federal.com)