-Caveat Lector-
<<You know ... the average citizen gets zapped for minor amounts like $10 Gs or
less, even when they've got a solid justification. I suppose it's the number
of zeroes that may get confusing ... 5 is as good as 6, 6 as good as 7, so
perhaps 5 is as good as 8 or 9 (New Universal Math Business Estimation &
Rounding (NUMBER) rule). A<>E<>R >>
>From TheIndependent (UK)
> A TALE OF HOT MONEY AND 'MISS RUSSIA'
>
>
> HOLED UP in her Manhattan apartment with her young son and speaking only through
> her lawyer, Natasha Kagalovsky can do nothing now but wait. From Lucy Edwards,
> who has gone into hiding in London, there has been no word. She too is waiting.
> They are not alone in their suspense as investigators in several capitals strive
> to unravel an apparent Russian money-laundering scandal encompassing up to
> $15bn.
>
> Like the sums of money involved, the stakes are sky-high. Certainly, they are
> high for the two Russian-born women, both of whom were senior executives with
> the Bank of New York, where investigators think the main laundering accounts
> were held. The women, who are responsible for drumming up business with Russia,
> were both put on suspension by the bank last week. The stakes are high for their
> respective husbands, who have also come under scrutiny in the investigations.
> Serious embarrassment - and maybe federal sanctions - loom over the bank.
>
> But the fall-out from the affair could be spread far wider. If the allegations
> of massive laundering are proven, politicians in the US especially will demand
> reforms in a banking system that apparently is unable to control such illicit
> flows.
>
> Still more grave are new suggestions that some of the money has been skimmed
> from international loans to Russia, notably from the International Monetary
> Fund. Already voices in Washington are sayingIMF loans to Moscow should be
> suspended until the truth is fully uncovered.
>
> And the shadow of the affair is threatening the offices of political leaders on
> both continents. Anonymously, investigators have argued that senior officials in
> the Yeltsin administration may have been involved in money-laundering schemes,
> including his daughter and adviser, Tatyana Dyachenko.
>
> Some have said that President Yeltsin must have been aware of the transactions.
>
> In Washington, blame for the mess is being cast by some on Vice President Al
> Gore, who has taken a lead role in supervising President Clinton's policies of
> supporting Russian reform. Aides to Mr Gore have already rushed to try to
> insulate him from allegations that he was among those turning a blind eye to
> corruption in the new Russian capitalism.
>
> Leading the attack on the administration has been the Republican candidate,
> Steve Forbes. "It's long been in the papers that tens of millions of Russians
> are not being paid; it's long been known billions are being siphoned off," he
> declared. "And yet they keep shovelling billions of IMF money into a government
> that misuses it."
>
> Reaching the truth of what happened will not be easy. The claims that IMF money
> may have been involved are far from proven. Nor is it even clear that all of the
> money that apparently washed through some five accounts at the Bank of New York,
> held by a London-incorporated firm called Benex, were actually generated either
> from Russian mafia earnings or corruption and pilfering.
>
> Channelling profits through foreign accounts is a common and usually legitimate
> practice of Russian corporations seeking to evade often horrendous Russian
> currency regulations and to protect capital from the vagaries of the uncertain
> rouble economy.
>
> "This is going to take some considerable time. It will be more like months than
> weeks," a spokesman for Britain's National Crime Squad, which is leading the
> London end of the probe, admitted yesterday. Suggesting a deep well of
> mysterious dealings, one US official told USA Today newspaper: "The more we dig,
> the more we find."
>
> What investigators have to work with now are streams of transaction records
> seized from the Bank of New York and the slowly expanding cast of characters
> they believe may hold the key to the scandal's mystery. Nobody, it should be
> stressed, has yet been charged with wrongdoing. Nor has any institution. Top
> billing so far has been given to Mrs Kagalovsky.
>
> Employed by the Bank of New York in the mid-Nineties to drum up business in
> Moscow, her expertise on the Russian financial scene wasrevered. Mrs Kagalovsky
> is under the microscope in part because she was so close to the transactions now
> under suspicion at the Bank of New York. But the alarm bells were sounded also
> because of her marriage to Konstantin Kagalovsky. Press reports say Mr
> Kagalovsky, who was Russia's representative to the IMF in the early Nineties and
> who then moved to the once-powerful Menatep Bank in Moscow, has increasingly
> become the focus of the fast-expanding money-laundering probe.
>
> The Kagalovskys, who met in Washington in 1993, share a lawyer in New York who
> has denied that they have committed any wrong-doing. In a statement, Stanley
> Arkin insisted: "Konstantin and Natasha wish to state unequivocally that they
> have never been involved in money-laundering activities."
>
> Menatep Bank, which has been insolvent since the autumn 1998 Russian economic
> crash, also this week protested its innocence. "Any references or allusions to
> improprieties either on the part of the bank or Mr Kagalovsky are fallacious and
> reckless," it said.
>
> Then there is Lucy Edwards in London. She too was responsible for finding
> Russian business for the Bank of New York and has also attracted attention
> because of her husband. He has been identified as Peter Berlin, also a Russian,
> who, according to reports, heads Benex and is the holder of the five accounts at
> the bank through which money may have been laundered. Ms Edward's home, it
> emerged yesterday, was recently searched by British investigators. The couple
> have said nothing.
>
> A fifth character on the cast list is Semion Mogilevitch, a Russian businessman
> living in Hungary whom the authorities have characterised as a pivotal Russian
> mafia leader. He reportedly helped form a Pennsylvania-based company, YBM
> Magnex, that may, according to investigators, have also been used as a vehicle
> for the money-laundering. He has also denied all involvement.
>
> Helping Russia in its transition to capitalism has always been a paramount goal
> of Washington. And for many, like the Bank of New York, it has offered high
> rewards. But no one ever argued it would be clean or free of criminal
> intrusions.
>
> Mr Gore knew this. The Bank of New York surely knew it. Mrs Kagalovsky knew it
> from the day she attended a business meeting in Riga and one of her
> interlocutors burst waved two pistols. Only when the multiple investigations
> into this alleged money laundering are concluded will we know just how badly
> things have gone wrong.
A<>E<>R
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