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INTELLIGENCE NEWSLETTER # 401 - 08/03/01 International Politics : The U.S. Connection in Caucasus
Ex-president Bill Clinton’s pardons-for-cash scandal is only the tip of an iceberg that reveals close connections between the Washington establishment and an international network of Russian mobsters.
At the origin of the saga was the revelation by the National Enquirer that Hillary Clinton’s brother Hugh Rodham received some $400,000 for arranging last minute presidential pardons for two ex-convicts. From that starting point one can see the extent of common interests of the previous and new U.S. administrations concerning oil reserves in the Caucasus.
Two years ago Hugh and his brother Tony traveled to the small autonomous Georgian republic of Ajaria where they hoped to make a quick profit. There, they did business with Aslan Abashidze, head of the republic, who convinced them to invest in a hazelnut cartel. U.S. intelligence officials later managed to persuade Clinton to warn his brothers-in-law away from the deal.
A fierce opponent of Georgian president Eduard Shevarnadze, Abashidze made much of his fortune from high-level crime. He is a close friend of Grigori Loutchansky, a Georgian-born Israeli citizen who is considered by the National Security Council as a main cog in Russian crime. He owns the Austria-based firm Nordex and was also a key player in Motorola’s $5 billion Iridium satellite project.
In the early 1990s Loutchansky teamed up with Marc Rich, the fugitive trader who was given a pardon by Clinton. The two made billions in selling Russian oil and aluminum from faltering Soviet-era and mafia-controlled state enterprises to the west.
Loutchansky is on an official watch list maintained by the U.S. State Department but that didn’t stop him from entering the U.S. in 1993 to attend a White House dinner with Clinton. Loutchansky has a friend, Roger Tamraz, who had donated a large sum of money to the Democrats.
A Lebanese-American, Tamraz worked to get Clinton’s support for the construction of an oil pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to Ceyhan in Turkey. This presented the advantage to the U.S. of providing access to Central Asian oil without passing by way of Russia.
Construction of the pipeline also involved a wealthy Chechen businessman named Khozhakhmed Nukhayev, rumored to be one of the most influential Chechen mafia bosses but who became president of the U.S.-Caucasus Chamber of Commerce headquartered in Washington. Nukhayev spent some time in Houston persuading big oil companies to bankroll the oil pipeline.
In the consortium formed to build the pipeline figure BP Amoco, Bechtel, Exxon Mobil and Halliburton, the company previously run by vice president Dick Cheney. Other officials of the new Bush administration are linked to the affair. One is Richard Armitage, who is now Colin Powell’s number two man at the State Department, who chaired the U.S.-Azerbaidjan Chamber of Commerce. At the time the chamber’s lawyer was the son of former secretary of state James Baker. Also, Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, was recently said by former president Clinton to have once been a lawyer for Marc Rich.
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