BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WASTED IN AFGHANISTAN

If the evidence hold ups, Congressional investigations into wasteful spending in Afghanistan will find that the scale of the problem matches Iraq where billions of US taxpayer dollars are unaccounted for.
According to some Pentagon estimates, the US spends approximately $1 billion a month in Afghanistan which, like Iraq, is showing few signs that the hundreds of billions spend in both countries since 2002 have created the democracies the Bush administration promised the American public. Since 2003, most of the focus has been on Iraq but with increasing Taliban attacks against NATO forces attention is turning to Afghanistan. It now clear the Bush administration’s image of that country contradicts the reality. Yet, President Bush in his latest State of the Union repeated his customary mantra that Afghanistan was a success story. The truth is that most of the country remains lawless and is controlled by warlords and their militias. And, Afghanistan continues to rank as the world’s largest heroin producer. Add to that, the inability of the central government t to exercise any control beyond the capital, Kabul. Therefore people want to know how the US could spend vast sums of money and not dramatically improve the lives of Afghans and radically upgrade the infrastructure. Afghans themselves have been asking the same question for years, as have some international agencies and observers.
When trying to find answers to the money question, one has to recognize the fact that the Defense Department finds it hard to account for much of its spending. In September 2005, it conceded that it spent $115 billions fighting terrorism between 2001 through May 2005 but possessed no detailed figures for approximately $7 billions of that sum spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
An example of the way the Pentagon handles money was evident in 2004 when it overstated the cost of Army reservists by over $2.1 billion. Contrast that with the spending by the Provisional Authority in Iraq during its short lifespan – April 2003 – 2004. It was allocated close to $39 billion but also spent $19.7 billions in cash from UN administered Iraqi oil funds. Most of the cash was never fully audited and was apparently used to restore services.
Like Iraq, Afghanistan offers lots of examples of highways, hospitals and schools that were never built even though companies received large sums of money for their construction. In 2005, an Afghan journalist, Mirwais Harooni openly criticized road building by US contractors. He citied wasteful spending as a major issue and gave as an example a 389 kilometer highway leading from Kabul. A US company, the St. Louis based Berger Group was awarded the contract over international companies even though its cost per kilometer was $700,000 compared to $250,000 from reputable competitors. In the end, Berger Group outsourced the job to Turkish and Indian companies. At the same time, Berger Group was behind schedule on a separate $656 million contract to build schools. The former Afghan Planning Minister, Ramazan Bashard has publicly lambasted US contractors by claiming the Taliban built better roads.
Ashraf Ghani, the country’s Finance Minister between 2004 – 2004 compiled a report on foreign aid spending for the Overseas Development Institute that highlighted some of the wasteful use of US and foreign aid. He pointed to the fact that international agencies were being contracted to build schools for approximately $250,000 each when they could have built for $40,000 by the Afghan authorities. He pointed to another absurd example of US planning, namely the building of the road between Kabul and Kandahar. The Afghan government estimated its cost at $35 million but it eventually cost the US taxpayer $190 million in contracts to US companies. In Mr. Ghani’s opinion, 90% of the $1 billion reconstruction funds provided by the US in 2002 were wasted.
Because of the vast sums of money the US sets aside for Afghanistan, lots of vested interests are constantly jockeying for a slice of the action with the result that there are over 2,000 international aid agencies in Afghanistan. Ghani claims that when he was in government he was upset that outside agencies poached his best workers by paying them large salaries. He saw that as one of the negative effects of the way in which aid was channeled through NGOs - non-governmental organizations- and not through the Afghan government which he contends could have used it much more frugally and wisely.
In his report, he heavily criticized international aid agencies for spending huge sums of money on staff salaries, as well as for the setting up of headquarters and the purchase of the latest technical equipment. He described them driving around in expensive off-road vehicles emblazoned with their respective company logos. They also employed mostly US experts whose fees and living expenses were outrageous. He warned that the use of outside experts meant Afghans were not given a chance to learn important skills because lucrative engineering contracts in particular were being outsourced mostly to US contractors. What he failed to recognize was that much of USAID has become a part of foreign policy and is handled by the State Department. Attached to it is the principle that whatever is spent overseas should benefit American corporations and if possible create consumers for American products. A case in point was the visit over a year ago of Laura Bush to Afghanistan where she promised $17.7 million to help women and girls and combat Aids. What she failed to mention was that the money had already been earmarked for a private for profit American university of Afghanistan.
One of the most egregious uses of US taxpayer dollars has been the handing out of millions upon millions in cash to buy the loyalty of Afghan warlords and their militias. There is evidence the CIA and other clandestine agencies of the US government have driven into remote villages with jeeps packed with fresh dollar bills. The subsequent handouts of those dollars are not registered in spending figures presented to Congress.
The Defense Department has spent billions on paying contractor mercenaries who operate in Afghanistan and Iraq. The estimates of the numbers of ex-soldiers on the DOD’s book vary between 30,000 and 35,000. They have been hired to boost the number of US soldiers on the ground and to hide the fact that both conflict zones have had inadequate numbers of combat personnel to deal with growing insurgencies. Detailed figures for that aspect of the war are hard to come by.
Congressional investigators will this year direct serious scrutiny at the big players who have got the juiciest contracts in both Afghanistan and Iraq. They include: Kellogg Brown & Root Halliburton; Parsons Group, Fluor Corps; Washington Group International and Bechtel Inc. Between 2002 and 2004, Halliburton of which Vice- President Dick Cheney was once CEO received contracts worth approximately $11.5 billion. Parsons Group was the second largest recipient with $5.5 billion and the other three had contracts in the region of $3.3 billion. Corporate construction giants like Parsons and Halliburton are known to spend as much as $1 million a year in lobbying Congress and their Boards read like a Who’s Who of former US government employees, including members of Congress and the Armed Services. So far, the Justice Department under the Bush Administration has done little to make corporations and individuals legally responsible for the large sums of US taxpayer dollars that have been wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan,
One of the factors that has emerged from investigations into wasteful spending is that some international aid promises, from countries other than the US and Britain, can be categorized as “phantom aid.” That kind of aid represents tens of millions of dollars pledged by countries across the globe. Unfortunately, it never finds its way to Kabul or Baghdad. Very often it is pledged as public relations exercises by governments and heads of states. What happens to that money is a mystery. It can be earmarked for aid to Iraq or Afghanistan but then set a side for clandestine projects or placed into private accounts.

ISRAEL ARMY BOSS FIRST SACRIFICIAL LAMB FOR LEBABON DEBACLE

Israel’s internal war of attrition over its embarrassing military performance in Lebanon in 2006 has claimed its first victim, its Army Chief of Staff, Lt. General Dan Haluzt. He resigned on January 16, having been in the job for only 18 months.
His resignation came after mounting public pressure for someone at the top of the political-military chain of command to fall on his sword and take one for the team. Halutz became the sacrificial lamb when it appeared that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose ratings are at an all time low because of his handling of the Lebanon war, was not willing to offer himself up for slaughter. Neither was his defense minister, Amir Peretz but like Halutz they are now in the eye of the storm as Israel continues to reel from the fact that it lost its military cloak of invincibility in his war with Hezbollah. For most Israelis, the Lebanon campaign was the worst military failure in Israel’s short history and one that shattered the belief of most Israelis that there was no threat they couldn’t eliminate. They had never considered the possibility their powerful military machine, with its hi-tech American planes, missiles and surveillance gear, would ever abandon a fight, especially with a rag tag guerilla army like Hezbollah. As we now know, Israel was outfoxed by Hezbollah’s intelligence arm, as well as by its fighters, and Israel’s prolonged “shock and awe” bombing of civilian areas of Lebanon cost it dearly in terms of its global image.
Prior to the Lebanon conflict, Lt. Gen. Halutz knew all about fighting a dirty war and about being in the center of a storm of controversy. Before he became chief of the IDF- Israeli Defense Forces, staff he was commander of the IAF, the Israeli Air Force. In his IAF role he developed what became known as “targeted assassinations,” the controversial policy of blowing up homes and cars in high density civilian areas in order to kill Hamas militants. He began by bringing together specialized pilots and members of the IDF, Mossad and Shabat, the Israeli internal security service to share intelligence on targets. He then ordered the most up-to-date planes and surveillance equipment from the United States for carrying out assassinations.
One of his most controversial decisions was to authorize the dropping of a one ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza on the night of July 23, 2002. The target of the attack was Salah Shahade, a Hamas commander but he was not the only one killed when the bomb tore apart the building. His wife and daughter died, as did nine others, mostly children. At the time, Israeli Prime Minster, Ariel Sharon, applauded the attack but it was condemned across the world, as well as by peace groups in Israel. What made it particularly heinous, aside from the deaths of innocent children, was the fact that hours before it happened the leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin promised an end to suicide bombings. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas were negotiating an end to terror. In a revenge attack in Jerusalem a week later, eight civilians were killed two of them Americans.
Halutz had no regrets about the Gaza attack and told a journalist that when it was over he told his pilots: “You can sleep well tonight. I also sleep well, by the way…….Your execution was perfect. Superb!”
In response to a question of whether the attack was morally reprehensible, given the civilian deaths, he replied that there was a moral consideration built into the planning and a mistake or accident did not make it wrong. His response reflected a traditional Israeli military principle that the target, if it is a Hamas militant, not only justifies the means but any additional death toll. As a consequence of such a mindset, the risk of “collateral damage” – a politico-military euphemism for dead civilians - has rarely dissuaded Israeli military figures like Halutz or politicians like Sharon or Olmert from using overwhelming force in civilian areas. Israel’s campaign in Gaza and Lebanon has proved that to be true. At the end of the Lebanon war last summer, Israeli artillery units and war planes sprayed parts of Lebanon with almost one million cluster bomb droplets, knowing they will kill the innocents for perhaps a decade or more to come.
In the wake of the bombing of the Gaza apartment, Halutz ran into a firestorm of criticism in Israel when he said members of peace groups who criticized his targeting policies were traitors and a clause should be found in the law to put them on trial for treason. The Israeli Supreme Court later forced him to back away from that pronouncement. Amnesty International has credited him with ordering the destruction of most of the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon last summer and of threatening the Lebanese that if they did not get ride of Hezbollah the country would “pay a heavy price.” And it did.
Lt. Gen Halutz ran into a different controversy in August 2006 after was revealed that a month earlier he sold off part of his stocks portfolio hours after learning that Hezbollah had kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. That kidnapping became Israel’s justification for him launching the war against Lebanon. Halutz claimed the sell-off was a personal matter.
His sudden career demise may well be a portent of things to come. So far there have been at least one dozens Israeli inquiries into the failures of the Lebanon campaign and the Israeli public are clamoring for more resignations. All of this comes at a time when leadings politicians in the country are mired in scandal, including Prime Minister Olmert. He is the target of a probe into a 2005 bank privitization.

FORMER RUSSIAN SPY MURDER A PROFESSIONAL HIT

As the mystery surrounding the assassination of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko deepens there is a growing urgency within American and British intelligence services to trace the source of the chemical weapon used to kill him.
The weapon was Polonium 210, a very rare and lethal radioactive material five million times more deadly than hydrogen cyanide. If it is ingested or inhaled, it only takes a quantity the size of a spec of dust to kill a person. Because it is not harmful if it comes into contact with the skin, it has to be converted into a form whereby it can be dissolved in liquid. If heated to over 500 degrees it can also become airborne and deadly. Scotland Yard experts believe a minute particle of it was put in a cup of tea that Litvinenko drank while in the company of three Russians, two of them former KGB officers, in a London hotel.
What fascinates, but also concerns counter terrorism experts watching the investigation is that, while this may be the first time Po 210, as it is known in scientific circles, was used in an assassination, the chemical could pose an even greater threat if terrorists got their hands on large quantities of it. That has spurred the British and American intelligence services to track down its source while putting even greater efforts into locating and interviewing people connected to the dead spy.
Po 210, as it is known to scientists, is mostly used in nuclear establishments and is not only hard to obtain but very dangerous to handle. Those who work with it are highly trained in the use of specialized laboratory equipment and are aware of the dangers of removing it from a secured environment. The assassin, or assassins, who killed Litvinenko, would have needed to be connected to people with the skills to convert a minute quantity of it into a James Bond type weapon that could be concealed in a special container and transported across international borders into Britain. Many experts believe the weaponizing of Po 210 in such a form would have required the involvement and expertise of an organization linked to an intelligence service or to former highly placed intelligence officers who worked at some time within, or close to the nuclear industry. Once Po 210 is weaponized, an assassin or assassins deployed to use it would need to be familiar with its chemical nature and how to avoid being contaminated when transporting and eventually removing it from a protective container. Such a container could be the size of a pen or the size of a sweetener dispenser but would be highly sophisticated in order for it to dispense a particle or two of the chemical.
A lot of Scotland Yard’s focus is being directed at Russia and particularly Litvinenko’s former employers, the FSB, once known as the KGB. Throughout its history, the KGB favored elaborate poisoning plots. In recent times notable examples included the assassination of the Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov in London. He was pricked with the top of an umbrella tipped with a deadly poison as he emerged from a London subway. The poison was believed to be ricin. In September 2004, the Ukrainian

President, Viktor Yuschenko, was fed the lethal chemical dioxin in his food. He almost died and was left with his face horrifically scarred. He attributed the attempt on his life to Ukrainian security officials with links to the FSB. A separate attempt was made to poison the Russian journalist, Anna Politkosvskaya, a friend of Litvinenko, and a bitter critic of the Russian Army’s crimes in Chechnya. When the poison plot against her failed, she was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow on October 7 last year. During the Cold War, the KGB had its own supply of what NATO called “red agents” – chemical weapons. It also had at least 21 nuclear suitcase devices. NATO had a special unit that kept a close eye on the KGB’s chemical experiments. Over decades, KGB defectors claimed that the organization had a facility called Laboratory 12 to design and weaponize chemicals to use in the assassination of its enemies abroad.
Whether or not such a facility existed, rumors of its existence had the effect of silencing many of the KGB’s critics. Litvinenko’s demise will have the same impact on Russian emigres even if the KGB’s successor the FSB was not involved in poisoning him. Some people have said the FSB could not be the culprit in this evolving drama because it would be silly to carry out such a headline grabbing assassination. In other words, by its Bond-like character it would draw too much attention to the FSB and the Putin government. Be that as it may, a long time ago the KGB set a precedent for flayboyant assassinations but made sure they could never be directly linked to them. What matters most to governents who use such means is the fear it instills in its enemies. For example, the Israeli intelligence service Mossad has used chemical weapons. In September 1977, a Mossad hit squad was seized in Jordan after it tried to assassinate the Hamas leader, Khalid Meshal, using a chemical weapon contained in a syringe. Howwver, Po 210 has not been known to figure in the Mossad arsenal though it was reported that four people died through exposure to it in a laboratory in Israel in 1957. They were working on a radioactive project at the time but the whole msatter was hushed up by the Israeli authorities.
One factor that concerns investigators in the Litvinenko is that the smuggling of nuclear materials from within the former Soviet Union, and especially from Russian nuclear sites, has been difficult to detect and eradicate. In 1999, a former Russian army officer was caught trying to smuggle a capsule of radioactive materials into Uzbekistan to sell on the black market. The capsule contained Po 210 mixed with Beryllium which is a compound used in triggering nuclear reactions. Experts agree that polonium in that form would have needed specialist expertise to convert it into a minutarized weapon of the type used to to kill Litvinenko. Anyway, it would be unlikely the Black Market would have the facilities, equipment or people with skills to do that succcessfully. Another theft of Po 210, perhaps as much as 10 kilos of it, was reported to have occurred within Russia in 1999. While no one is sure what happened to that quantity of the chemical, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that it found its way to nuclear industroies in Iran, India or Pakistan.
But no matter how much expertise it required to convert Po 210 into a tiny but deadly weapon, one cannot rule out the possibility that vested interests, namely extremely wealthy men with links to organized crime, were able to acquire the chemical on the black market and use their massive resources to buy the skills of some poorly paid, disgruntled scientists in the former Soviet Bloc. Those vested interests may have felt Litvinenko had information that could have seriously damaged them.
That theory has some merit in the deepening Litvinenko mystery as a new series of revelations has surfaced to further complicate the story. It is now been revealed that Yuri Svets, a former KGB officer based in Virginia gave Litvinenko a dossier which was smuggled out of one of the most secret departments of the FSB. It was 100 pages of highly classified information on how the Putin government and the FSB seized the Yukos oil giant from private ownership. Litvinenko gave a copy of the dossier to Leonid Nevzlin an oligarch hiding out in Israel. Nevzlin was co-owner of Yukos and is accused by the Russian state of trying to assassinate his enemies. His co-owner of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, languishes in a Siberian prison after being found guilty of tax evason after what many claimed was a rigged trial by the Russian state, determined to gain control of Yukos. Svets also had contact with Mario Scaramella, the Italian who was in a London sushi bar with Litvinenko just before his death. Scaramella, who has been described by some as a dangerous fantasist, was hospitalized for a short time with traces of Po 210. He claims he met Litvinenko in the sushi bar to warn him they had both been targeted for assassination. Other traces of Po 210 were found in the London hotel where Litvinenko had tea with three Russians and in rooms occupied by two of the Russians. It was also found on planes the used between Moscow and London and in a house one of them owned in Germany.
Another interesting development in the case is the claim by a 33-year-old Russian based in London – Julia Svetlichnaja – that Litvinenko told her last summer that he intended to use information in the FSB-Yukos file to blackmail some very important figures, one of whom was an oligarch but not the oligarch, Boris Beresovsky whom he considered a friend. According to Svetlichnaya, who claims she was doing academic research when she first met the former spy, he bombarded her with emails right up to his death. In some of the interviews she has given to journalists, she has suggested that Litvinenko indicated the Yulos file had very damning information on how the Putin government acquired Yukos and the rich men it used to help it in that task. It may also have had secret notes on the murder of the journalist, Politkosvskaya. If all this is true, Litvinenko had made very dangerous enemies and they would have known that he was passing the file to men like Nevzlin who would use it against the FSB and the Putin government.
One thing is certain. This story has yet many more twists to follow. If it becomes so complex it it impossible to unravel, then the finger of blame will rightly be pointed at the world of intelligence whose art is deception. The question intelligence officers always ask when trying to solve an assassination is - “who benefits from this?” They argue if that question can be answered it is easier to find the perpetrators, the theory being that the beneficiary is the perpetrator. But that is not necessarily true, or is it? Take the attempted assassination of the last Pope. Many people say the Kremlin ordered it and used the Turkish terrorist, Ali Agca to carry it out. The reason the Pope had to be killed, they claim, was because the Kremlin saw him a serious threat to its authority in Poland where he was exploiting his Polish roots to support dissident shipyard workers in Gadnsk. By using the power of the Papacy, he was underming Kremlin authority. Therefore he had to be killed. If that was the reasoning and strategy, the outcome was failure. The Kremlin was put in the international spotlight and tried to shift the blame to Bulgaria. But that ploy did not stop the West accusing the KGB of masterminding the attempt on the life of the Pope. The Krmelin suffered further when the West, especially the United States, threw its weight behind the Gadnsk Shipyard workers. As a consequence, Poles and the Pope, did more than Ronald Reagan to “tear down that wall.” So, the theory that the benificary is likely to be the perpetrator seemed not to apply to that episode in history. However, one of the senior investigators the KGB selected to investigate the assassination of the Pope blamed the West, using that same theory. He claimed that America benefited most by the attempt on the life of the Pope. He rightly pointed out that Ali Agca was a member of the Turkish grey Wolves, a right wing Turkish militia that was infiltrated and used by the CIA. Therefore, in this KGB officer’s opinion, the CIA planned the Pope’s killing to weaken the Soviet Union. When it comes to the world of intelligence, nothing is easily explained and facts can be easily manipulated.

Murky World Of Oligarchs And Former Spies

The claim by the Kremlin that a Russian born Jewish oligarch hiding out in Israel was involved in the radiation poisoning of former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko in London, has added yet another layer to an already murky tale.
Moscow’s Prosecutor General pointed an accusing finger at Leonid Nevzlin who fled to Israel in 2004 to avoid charges that he ordered the murders of some of his business associates. At the time, he and another Jewish oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, owned the Yukos oil company, which was later seized by the Russian state and eventually declared bankrupt. In Nevzlin’s absence, Khodorkovsky was arrested, found guilty of tax evasion and given an eight year prison term. As a further punishment, he was sent to a remote Siberia prison camp to serve his sentence.
According to the Moscow Prosecutor General, the same type of plutonium 210 that killed Litvinenko in London was used to kill one of Nevzlin’s business competitors. The prosecutor’s office told journalists that Nevzlin and other former Yukos executives were behind not only behind attempts to wipe out business competitors but that Nevzlin had Litvinenko killed.
Nevzlin’s friends say the latest accusation against him is not only extravagant but is another attempt by Russian president Vladimir Putin and the FSB to attack oligarchs who continue to expose Russia’s role in ordering the assassinations of its enemies abroad, in particular Litvinenko. Nevzlin claims that Litvinenko visited him in Israel weeks before he was murdered and gave him documents showing how Russian intelligence was running a dirty war against former Yukos executives and oligarchs like himself and Boris Berezovsky.
Since 2003 when Nevzlin fled to Israel the Kremlin has made several attempts to have him returned to Moscow to face murder charges. In 2005, when he visited Washington and New York, the Kremlin even appealed to the White House to extradite him. Nevzlin claims that not only are the charges against him bogus but his billionaire status is a myth deliberately perpetuated by the Kremlin. He told an Israeli newspaper that all he had at one stage was $5 in a Swiss bank but the Swiss authorities warned him that the Russian government was going to try to freeze the account. He quickly moved most of the money out of the account, leaving $100,000 for family expenses.
Supporters of Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky have consistently argued that Vladimir Putin personally moved against them because they bankrolled one of his opponents in the 2004 Russian presidential election. Whether or not that is true, in 2002, two years after he took over the presidency from Boris Yeltsin, Putin warned oligarchs that they should not use their wealth to try to shape Russia’s political landscape, something Nevzlin later tried to do while in exile in Israel. Putin also told the oligarchs if they stayed out of politics they would be left alone. After that warning, in the autumn of 2002, several Jewish oligarchs, including Nevzlin fled to Israel, and Berezovsky allegedly on the advice of the dead Russian spy, Litvinenko sought sanctuary in London.
Nevzlin claims that within months of his decision to support an anti-Putin candidate in the 2004 presidential election, the Kremlin moved against him. In January 2004, he was living outside Tel Aviv when he got the news there was an international warrant for his arrest on tax evasion charges. Six months later a second warrant was issued accusing him of conspiring with a Yukos security chief to murder a businessman and his wife, and of ordering two attempts on the life of the president of East Petroleum, a Yukos competitor. Nevzlin claims the warrants were efforts by the Kremlin to fabricate serious charges in order to punish him.
However, the warrants were no threat to Nevzlin because he had been given de facto political asylum in Israel in 2003. That was done when the Israeli state granted him an Israeli passport within days of his arrival in the country. As an Israeli citizen, he was immune from prosecution because Israel has a tendency to refuse requests for the extradition of Jews resident in Israel. He has since strenuously denied that he used his wealth to fund Jewish projects in Israel as a way of courting favor with the Israel authorities or that he laundered hundreds of millions through Israel’s biggest bank.
Israel’s position on extradition is a somewhat confusing one. The 1978 law banning the handing over of any Israeli national accused of crimes abroad was amended in 1998 only because the US government had demanded that Israel hand over an American teenager, Samuel Sheinbein. He had fled to Tel Aviv after charged were issued against him for murder. The change to the law did not affect the Sheinbein case because he faced trial for the murder in Israel but it caused enough outrage in Congress for the Israeli government to amend its law. The resulting change stipulated that if a suspect wanted abroad was resident in Israel, extradition could only proceed if two factors were in place. One was that a defendant's country of origin had to have an extradition treaty with Israel. The second was that if a defendant were to be found guilty and sentenced to a term of imprisonment, the prison term had to be served in Israel.
Nevzlin’s use of Israel as an ideal place of exile was is nothing new. There has been a growing tendency in the past two decades for some rich Jews with connections to organized crime in Eastern Europe to move to Israel the moment they get into trouble with local or international legal authorities. In several instances, they have been able to do that because they had Israeli passports. By all accounts, the amending of the 1978 law had little effect and did not prevent Israel from being a place where Jews from other countries could hide out. Israeli Justice, Horan Porat, who helped amend the law in 1998, said the old legislation was responsible for making Israel a haven for criminals, not realizing the changes he was making would not considerably alter Israel’s extradition rules.
This latest element in the already murky story of the poisoning and death of former Russian spy Litvinenko in London has brought back into focus the short history of the Russian oligarchs. The term oligarch came into vogue in the early 1990s to define a group of people who suddenly became extremely wealthy, not having previously owned anything. It was the era of Russian president, Mikhail Gorbachev who was determined to liberalize the Soviet economy. Unfortunately, he did not foresee that, by suddenly opening up Russia and its republics to a semblance of a free market economy without proper controls in place, the outcome would be economic lawlessness.
Within a short time, there was an economic power vacuum filled by organized crime, opportunists and both communist party officials and members of the state security apparatus throughout the Soviet bloc. Western goods, including computers flooded into Russia. But the real opportunities for those wanting to make a lot of money came during the eventually collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise to power of a drunken, corrupt leader, Boris Yeltsin. He surrounded himself with men who wanted to privatize everything for their own ends. In effect that opened the way for well connected people to seize, sell off or hold and exploit the assets of Russia and some of its republics. In particular, those with a shrewd knowledge of banking and energy resources quickly made financial killings. Overnight men like Nevzlin, Anatoly Chubias, and Yegor Gaidara, who all now reside in Israel, became billionaires. So too did Berezovsky, Kohodorkovsky and at least 18 others.
Many of the emerging rich were well connected to the Communist Party and its state apparatchiks and as such they had all the information they needed to get things done and to assess the market value of state assets. What many people today seem to forget is that, a side from the billionaires, there are now hundreds of millionaires who were minor party officials in positions that allowed them to exploit the chaos of the Yeltsin era. Some ran state controlled factories that immediately made them their own and sold them off. Others moved into real estate, seizing state owned property. Across the board there was a confluence of elements, one of which was a burgeoning organized crime element. Members of the KGB got in on the act and quickly became partners with organized crime syndicates or provided security for the emerging rich. It was essentially a free for all and its effects are still being felt within Eastern Europe. For example, countries like Bulgaria and Rumania that have just joining the EU have high levels of corruption that can be traced back to the break up of the Soviet Union. Many of Bulgaria’s rich have organized crime connections that extend into Moscow and throughout Eastern Europe, a fact that worries the EU leadership in Brussels.
While oligarchs outside Russia point a critical finger at Putin, his supporters credit him with bringing order to the Russian economy which is now one of the strongest in the world. Russia’s energy resources alone make it a powerful global force economically and one on which Western Europe depends on for much of its gas and oil. Some observers argue that Putin’s tough stance prevented men like Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky from using their wealth to shape the political framework of Russia in a way that suited their business interests and those of western partners to whom they had become financially attached. No matter where the truth lies in the story of the Putin– Yukos battle, one thing is for sure, oligarchs like Nevzlin who fled to Israel and Britain are no longer in a position to influence the future of Russian politics. Those that remained behind thrive in a Russia that has to some extent embraced capitalism. They understand that their freedom to continue to make vast sums of money very much depends on their non involvement in the politics of the Kremlin.