By the early 1990s, the sources said, Wolf was playing a key role in developing
Ukraine into an international smuggling hub. His business activities were said to
include shipping, oil trading, narcotics, export of weapons, chemicals, metals, and
agricultural commodities - sometimes in cooperation with Soviet-era mobsters,
sometimes with the assistance of local officials.
Wolf first came into contact with Vadim Rabinovich in Israel in the early 1990s, one
Ukrainian police source said.
One of Wolf's important business associates, the police source said, is one of the
former Soviet Union's most notorious alleged criminals, Grigory Luchansky. That, if
true, could be the link between him and Rabinovich.
Luchansky was born in the 1940s, possibly in Latvia, according to several sources
contacted by the Post. He became a career KGB officer and served overseas in a
variety of posts. By the mid-1980s, Luchansky set up and ran Vienna-based Nordex, a
KGB-owned and operated business designed to launder money for overseas intelligence
operatives.
Nordex's primary trading partner in Ukraine was government-owned Ukragrotekhservis,
U.S. Congressman Dan Burton alleged during congressional hearings in April 1997.
Burton identified Rabinovich as Luchansky's key Ukrainian lieutenant, serving in a
variety of capacities including, until 1995, Nordex vice president.
Rabinovich has stated repeatedly that he severed relations with Luchansky in 1995 due
to Nordex's poor international reputation. He has consistently denied participating
in any criminal activity while he worked for Nordex.
An April 1997 Time magazine article identified Luchansky as "the most pernicious
unindicted criminal in the world."
Luchansky's trading activities in the former Soviet Union encompass weapons, oil,
narcotics, natural gas, chemicals, precious metals, fertilizers, agricultural
commodities, and consumer goods.
Other Luchansky enterprises reportedly include prostitution, drug manufacture,
racketeering, influence peddling and fixed privatization auctions.
Nordex grossed $2 billion in 1994, investing some of its income in enterprises
ranging from a Moscow beer brewery to a Kyiv tire plant, a Magnitogorsk steel mill,
an Austrian health spa and even a Uruguayan car dealership, according to various
media reports.
Luchansky's biggest business coup came in 1993, when he engineered a fuel-for-food
deal between Russia and Ukraine.
In 1995, after meeting at a Democratic Party fundraiser with U.S. President Bill
Clinton and sparking a U.S. political scandal, Luchansky fell under increasingly
intense international investigation.
In 1996 a $35 million gold mine deal brokered by Luchansky between the Kazakhstan
government and a Canadian mining company flopped, cutting into Nordex earnings.
Nordex has reportedly suffered in the wake of the emerging-markets economic crisis.
Luchansky maintains a residence in the Israeli seaside town of Netanya, a Mecca for
Soviet-region emigres and scene of intense Russian mob activity, the Jerusalem Post
newspaper reported.
The Post was unable to contact Luchansky for comment and his whereabouts are unknown.
I Expand My Summary Table Once Again
The table which I have been developing in my previous four letters to you can now be
elaborated with the Leonid Wolf entry. As the SBU press release gives no dates for the
Leonid Wolf assassinations, I am assuming that they took place in the last five years: