Reply #175: starroute wrote about Marc Rich in thread 5 [View All]

[robertpaulsen]

Post 237. Hope this helps.

237. Possible Viktor Bout connection with Marc Rich


I found I already had this in my files. It's from the LaRouchies, whose biases are pretty obvious, but I think this piece of information is probably reliable. The word "reportedly" in the story is a considerable hedge, though. I'd like to see something more solid on it.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3001sharon_mafiya...

January 10, 2003

EIR's ongoing investigation into the Russian Mafiya's current drive to consolidate a vise-like grip over Israel, via Sharon's re-election on Jan. 28, has found that all roads, eventually, lead to Zug, Switzerland and fugitive commodity trader Marc Rich. If the Russian Mafiya has one "Godfather," it is Rich.

<snip>

Rich, for decades, had the exclusive foreign contract to market Russian minerals and precious metals; his Soviet and Russian ties also involved massive international arms sales—some recent deals, reportedly, in partnership with Viktor Bout, the most notorious of the Russian black market gun-runners, who shares a base of operations with Rich in the tiny Arab Emirate of Sharjah, a well-known smugglers' haven, adjacent to the money-laundering capital of the Persian Gulf, Dubai. Bout has been linked to major arms sales to the Afghan Taliban, and to Liberia's Charles Taylor and the murderous Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone. Rich, long ago, established Liberia and Sierra Leone as two of his major African bases, dealing in "blood diamonds." Further, Bout's arms sales to the Taliban were carried out with Vadim Rabinovich, Loutchansky's Ukrainian Nordex partner!