Since RFE’s article about Robert Maxwell money
laundering funds out of Bulgaria with the former prime
minister Andrei Lukanov, a trial in Bulgaria had begun
for the murder of prime minister Lukanov, killed in
1996. Three Bulgarians and two Ukrainians (Alexei
Kichatov and Alexander Rusov) were the defendants
for the murder of Lukanov. The Ukrainians were
allegedly the guns hired by the Bulgarians. The court
has found them guilty. One of the witnesses in the
trial, Iliya Pavlov, a billionaire mafia oligarch and the
president of the MG Corp, (MultiGroup), was shot dead
one day after he testified at the trial. (Pavlov's wife was
a financial contributor to Hillary Clinton's election
campaign).
Lukanov had business dealings with Maxwell and the
Multigroup conglomerate as early as the 1980s. He
was a high-level communist party and government
official under the former dictator, Todor Zhivkov, and
became Bulgaria’s first post-communist prime minister
in 1989. He resigned in 1990 after anti-government
protests, and was widely known as one of the “gray
cardinals” of the Socialist Party, which won the 1994
elections. Andrei Lukanov was also a representative
of the giant energy Gazprom in Bulgaria through
TopEnergy.
A billionaire named Iliya Pavlov testifying at the
Lukanov murder trial, was shot dead on 7Mar03.
Pavlov was the president of the largest Bulgarian
industrial company, named MG Corporation. It was
recently renamed from Multigroup [aka Multi Group]
which was earlier linked to Robert Maxwell, Semion
Mogilevich, the KGB and the Solntsevo mafia. Pavlov
was ranked as the wealthiest person in Bulgaria and
the eighth richest in Eastern Europe. Just like in other
countries (e.g. Nordex in Austria), Multigroup was
involved in the scheme to loot the country after the
breakup of the USSR. The scheme involved the highest
levels of the Communist Party and the KGB/mafia with
help from Westerners. Robert Maxwell owned a money
laundering bank in Bulgaria. The BBC (8Mar03) reported
that: “Mr Lukanov, who masterminded the downfall of
Bulgaria's long-serving communist leader Todor Zhivkov
in 1989, was found shot in front of his Sofia home in
October 1996. At the time, Bulgarian media said Mr
Lukanov's death was a contract killing related to his
business activities.” In 1995, Ilya Pavlov replaced
Lukanov as head of TopEnergy (the joint venture with
Gazprom).
[
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/from_o ... 832167.stm
]
Pavlov’s wife, Toni Chergelanova, was the daughter
of Chergelanov, the chief of the Bulgarian Intelligence
Service, according to the Nova Makedonija (2Nov95),
which also points out Multigroup’s links to the KGB
and mafia, as well as expansion into Macedonia and
Serbia.
[
http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/mils/95-11-02.mils.html ]
Lukanov was also deeply involved in the project
codenamed “Neva” (created by the KGB, the Bulgarian
State Security and involving Robert Maxwell).
In his working paper titled, “The Political Economy of
Corporate Governance Change in Bulgaria: Washington
Consensus, Primitive Accumulation of Capital, and
Catching-Up in the 1990”, Evgeni Peev writes that
Multigroup was one of the special interest groups that
captured control of Bulgaria. Other such groups
included “Tron”, “G-13” and “Orion”. He writes that
the government of Prime Minister Berov was known
as “Multigroup’s government.”
One infamous multi-million dollar scandal involved
the Orion group and Mikhail Chernoy.
[
http://cei.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/wp/wp2002-1.pdf ]
Chernoy’s ties to Deripaska, Kuchma, Bezeq, and the
Russian mafia, et. al. were pointed out earlier.
[
http://www.infoukes.com/lists/politics/ ... /0066.html ]
Further information about the Multigroup, Tron and
Orion groups is provided by Robert D. Kaplan in his
article, “Hoods against Democrats”, in the Atlantic
Monthly (Dec98; p.32)
Robert Maxwell was born 65 miles south of Lviv in
Solotvyna (aka Slatinske Doly, Szlatina, Solotvino,
Aknazlaina) in 1923. By 1991, he was being called:
“The crook of the century” by Newsweek (16Dec91).
He became best known for the looting of employee
pension funds belonging to some 20,000 employees
at his Mirror Group companies in Britain.
[
http://www.dti.gov.uk/cld/mirrorgroup/ ]
Maxwell visited Bulgaria often and even had a
school named after him in 1989, called the Robert
Maxwell International Management School in Sofia,
Bulgaria. The Jerusalem Post (“Maxwell Heads
East Europe Fund”; 2Oct90) reported that Maxwell
was the lead investor of a $250 million fund for
investing in Eastern Europe and the USSR,
including Bulgaria. The limited partnership was
called the Maxwell Central and East European
Partnership.
Further to the Russell Davies book about Maxwell,
published in 1995 and referred to by Stefan Krause
above, another Maxwell book was released last year
titled: “Robert Maxwell, Israel’s Superspy: The Life
and Murder of a Media Mogul” (2002; Carroll & Graf
Publishers; ISBN: 0-78677-1078-0) written by Gordon
Thomas and Martin Dillon.
Gordon Thomas is a best-selling author who has
created television documentaries, written several
screenplays and written 43 books selling more than
45 million copies.
Martin Dillon is a foremost authority on global terrorism.
While writing this book, the co-author received death
threats at his New York home warning him to stop
writing the book. Also a hacker accessed his computer
in an attempt to destroy his research data. As a result,
the FBI has launched an investigation.
Robert Maxwell was the Labour Party’s Member of
Parliament. He moved in upper social and political
circles known to many that included many world leaders
such as Margaret Thatcher, George Bush, Francois
Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir
Kryuchkov, Todor Zhivkov, et. al. He was on friendly
enough terms that he used to call Thatcher and tell her
what the main story in his morning Daily Mirror was
going to be. Maxwell owned the global publishing
house Mirror Group of newspapers from which he
stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the employee
pension fund, leaving them high and dry long before
the Enron scandal broke.
The authors claim that Robert Maxwell was also a
superspy for Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.
He died under suspicious circumstances in 1991.
Thomas and Dillon claim that Maxwell was
assassinated by the Mossad.
