Russian Israeli Mobster Grigori Lerner - Netanya becoming Mob Town - Jewish Bulletin - 27Jun97
Stefan Lemieszewski
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk970627/iquiet.htm
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California.
June 27, 1997
Once-quiet Netanya turns into Mob town
LARRY DERFNER
Bulletin Correspondent
NETANYA, Israel -- Asked where gambling entrepreneur Alex Dubitsky was
murdered, the
owner of one of many outdoor restaurants in Netanya's Independence
Square pointed to a side
table at "David's," an adjacent eatery.
"Now don't ask me any more questions," he said.
Asked about the extortion, arsons and other murders connected to the
local gambling wars, the
owner of another restaurant in the Square said, "Nobody here will tell
you about it. Only the
police. You know how it is."
Netanya, a coastal city of 170,000 people located 20 miles north of
Tel Aviv, has a new image.
It used to be known as a working- and small-business-class town that
catered to tourists, and as
a cheaper and less crowded urban alternative to Tel Aviv, one which
had grown fast in recent
years with new immigrants.
Since May 26, though, Netanya has come to be thought of by Israelis
as simply "Chicago." That
image grows at a time when Israeli police are investigating alleged
ties between Knesset
members and alleged Russian Israeli mobster Gregory Lerner, also known
as Zvi Ben-Ari.
On that afternoon, a young man on a motorcycle rode up to David's, shot
Dubitsky twice in the
head and sped off. It happened in the middle of the city's public square,
in front of scores of
people eating lunch or walking by.
Dubitsky's was the fifth gambling-related murder in Netanya in less
than 18 months, and the 11th
involving criminal disputes. Considering Netanya's size, and that Israel
has a relatively modest
history of crime executions, these statistics add up to a plague.
Dubitsky was murdered, police say, in a battle over control of the gambling
parlors that dot
Independence Square, the city's industrial zone and wholesale produce
market.
He owned the Good Luck parlor, which, like others of its kind, has both
legal video games and
illegal slot machines.
This was the third attempt on Dubitsky's life. On two previous tries,
an assassin sent from
France had mistakenly killed Dubitsky's wife and stepson. Police say
Dubitsky's competitors
had the failed assassin, Shalom Abutbul, killed in Paris a month ago
because his screw-ups
humiliated them.
Many of Netanya's gambling operatives are of North African background,
and have connections
in France. As a result, French police are working with their Israeli
counterparts on the Netanya
file.
Dubitsky, 45, emigrated from Odessa seven years ago. Some reports have
it that the gambling
wars are being fought between the long-established local criminals
and the Russian
newcomers, but Netanya police officials maintained, "There's no ethnic
element involved. [As a
Russian immigrant,] Dubitsky was an aberration."
Some gambling parlors have been torched by competitors. So have some
shops run by
proprietors who refused to pay gangsters protection money. Most storeowners
who get shaken
down, however, prefer to pay. Few have the nerve to go to the police.
Netanya police, however, insisted that incidents of arson have been
diminishing. As far as
extortion goes, they said they can't gauge its extent because victims
who remain silent.
The owner of a local Burger Ranch franchise says that one day a man
came in and told him,
"This is mine now," threatening that if he didn't turn over the business,
he and his family would
face the consequences.
The owner was one of the few local citizens who went to the police,
and charges have been
pressed against the assailant.
Police say that the level of organized crime, and related violence,
is no higher in Netanya than
in other towns -- such as Jaffa, Beersheva and Ramle -- with power
struggles between criminal
groups.
"In Tel Aviv it's much worse," officials said.
However, over 100 officers from the Israel Police national investigative
unit have been sent to
Netanya.
Right after the Dubitsky murder, regional police commander Ze'ev Even
Chen told the local
newspaper, Inside Netanya, that while the city remains basically safe
to walk around in, "There
is in Netanya a hard core of sophisticated crime which started a few
years ago, and which
recently went up sharply."
Before Dubitsky was murdered, he told Yediot Aharonot, Israel's largest
daily newspaper, that
he wasn't worried for his life. Yet in police and criminal circles
in Netanya, it was understood
that he wasn't long for this world.
Now rumors are circulating that two more criminal figures in Netanya
have been targeted for
death by their competitors. A recent headline blared, "Who's Next In
Line?"
Stefan Lemieszewski
http://www.jewishsf.com/bk970627/iquiet.htm
Jewish Bulletin of Northern California.
June 27, 1997
Once-quiet Netanya turns into Mob town
LARRY DERFNER
Bulletin Correspondent
Another Russian Jewish Gangster who has a residence in Netanya is Grigori
Loutchansky.
It is also known that Vadim Rabinovich was the Vice President in Loutchansky's
Nordex company.
Stefan Lemieszewski
=================================================
http://www.ukar.org/korsha02.shtml
Kyiv Post
01Jul99
"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."
— SBU
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 all: 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.