to 60 Minutes researchers interested in developing a good story. However, for purposes
of this letter alone, we are primarily interested in information on Leonid Wolf which is
contained in the three segments in blue:
Who is Leonid Wolf and what is behind
government action?
News Analysis
By STEFAN KORSHAK
Post Staff Writer
01 July 1999
In making wealthy businessman Vadim Rabinovich persona non grata on June 24, the
Ukrainian government created a mystery. By simultaneously announcing that it had
taken a similar action against Leonid Borisovich Wolf back in December, it created
another one.
The government linked Wolf to numerous unsolved contract killings. But it did not
specify the link between Wolf and Rabinovich, other than to name them in the same
press release announcing that both Israeli citizens are banned from Ukraine.
That leaves the public, as usual, out of the loop about what the twin actions mean
and what evidence the Ukrainian government is holding. While Wolf could not be
reached for comment, Rabinovich denied the Ukrainian government's allegations in a
June 30 news conference in Tel Aviv.
The unanswered questions are numerous: What led the Ukrainian government to bar
Rabinovich from the nation for five years? What are his ties to Wolf? What evidence
links Wolf to murders?
The ban on the two men also raises larger questions about government motives: Coupled
with the pending embezzlement charges against former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko
and an aide, is the Ukrainian government finally getting tough on corruption? Or is
it simply being unfair to successful businessmen who happened to fall out of favor?
Those questions in turn raise the most unpredictable question of alclass="underline" What's next?
The official State Security Service (SBU) press release appears straightforward:
"Today Ukraine's Security Service, according to materials in its possession and in
the interests of Ukraine's national security, has forbidden the entrance the citizen
of Israel Vadim Zinoviovich Rabinovich, (passport numbers) from entering Ukraine for
the period of five years beginning 24 June 1999, for causing especially serious
damage to the Ukrainian economy.
"Moreover, on 17 December 1998, the SBU closed the right of entrance into Ukrainian
territory to Israeli citizen Leonid Borisovich Wolf, who is considered a member of a
professional organized criminal group, which is suspected of carrying out contract
killings in the Odessa, Kyiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions."
The relationship between Rabinovich and Wolf was not spelled out, nor was the reason
why the Ukrainian government chose to announce the decisions in the same news
release. Who is this Leonid Wolf?
A search of Ukrainian media archives for the last 10 years turned up nothing.
Ukraine's SBU and Ministry of Internal Affairs flatly declined comment, as did
Israeli Embassy spokesmen.
However, according to Kyiv law enforcement and Odessa business sources, Wolf is a
Ukrainian native who was born in the 1940s. He emigrated to Israel in the late 1970s
and became a citizen there.
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:
Date of my letter
Subject of my letter
Date of Attack
Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom
04Jul99
The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny
Summer 1941
25Jul99
Who did Israel Roitman murder?
1941
15May99
Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk?
April 1979
30Jun99
Who murdered Vadim Boyko?
February 14, 1992
Violence that you might have encouraged by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom
09Apr99
Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko?
Summer 1995
17May99
Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?
July 7-8, 1997
01Jul99
Who murdered Borys Derevyanko?
August 11, 1997
27Jul99
Who did Leonid Wolf murder?
1994-1999
And I Find My Earlier Conclusions Strengthened
For your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, you went to Ukraine
determined to broadcast the story - no matter what the evidence - of Ukrainians
oppressing and murdering Jews. In order to do so, you had to blind yourself to the
plentiful evidence that exactly the opposite was taking place. The reality is that
Ukraine is being plundered and assaulted by a Jewish mafia based in Israel. You can
begin your investigation of this phenomenon with the cases of the following three
Israeli citizens: (1) "the most pernicious unindicted criminal in the world" Grigory
Luchansky, (2) his "key Ukrainian lieutenant" Vadim Rabinovich, and (3) "contract
killer" Leonid Wolf. Please note that in your smearing of Ukraine, you were unable to
come up with evidence of a Ukrainian mafia based in Ukraine and victimizing Israel. The
evidence was the opposite, but you were not interested in evidence.
But since the subject of our discussion is not merely crime, but rather cross-ethnic
violence, I restrict my attention to assassin Leonid Wolf, and with respect to Leonid
Wolf, I ask you to note that you were unable to come up with evidence of a Ukrainian
assassin who roamed Israel murdering as he went, especially one whom Israel, fearing the
vengeance of a powerful Ukraine, neglected to arrest and put on trial, but merely banned
from Israeli soil for a time.
Mr. Safer, Ukraine's plunderers and assassins cannot operate in a vacuum. They need
support. They need Swiss banks to stash their loot. They need Israel to provide them
with sanctuary. They need journalists to smear their victims. And so, although you
have lost all claim to journalistic competence and integrity, at least you can console
yourself with not being alone and unappreciated. Indeed, you are a valued member of a
large and successful team. Grigory Luchansky, Vadim Rabinovich, and Leonid Wolf
undoubtedly know of your work, and they thank you for it.
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike
Wallace.
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER 809 hits since 23Oct99
Morley Safer Letter 16 23Oct99 Fifth anniversary commemoration
If, to imagine a comparable case, CBS management jointly owned a chicken-packing
plant that had been cited for sanitation violations, then it would be unethical for 60
Minutes to run a story defending the plant without disclosing its ownership.
October 23, 1999
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street
New York, NY
USA 10019
Morley Safer:
Fifth anniversary of The Ugly Face of Freedom
Now that we have arrived at the fifth anniversary of your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast
The Ugly Face of Freedom, I think that all might agree that five years has given us