Businessman Luchansky, whom Time magazine in the 1990s called "the world's most dangerous uncaptured criminal," has died

Entrepreneur Grigory Luchansky, founder of the international raw materials group Nordex, one of the first post-Soviet multimillionaires and a long-time partner of the Moscow authorities, died in Vienna, "Agency" writes.

His name appeared in international investigations into organized crime and money laundering, and publications about him became the subject of high-profile lawsuits. Data from "Proekt" also links Luchansky with high-ranking officials of the Moscow mayor's office.

Luchansky died on October 20 at the age of 81. The farewell ceremony will take place on October 25 at the Jewish Cemetery in Riga.

Grigory Luchansky was born in 1945 in Tashkent. After graduating from the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys, he was assigned to the Latvian SSR, where he headed the republican headquarters of student construction brigades and worked as vice-rector of the Latvian State University.

In 1983, Luchansky was sentenced to seven years in prison for stealing university property. In 1985, he was released on parole. Luchansky himself explained the criminal case as intrigues by the then head of the KGB of Latvia, Boris Pugo.

The Nordex group was registered in Austria in 1990. Already in 1993, Nordex entered the top five largest exporters of petroleum products from CIS countries. Its turnover was estimated at approximately $2 billion.

In 1993, Nordex participated in the supply of Russian oil to Ukraine in exchange for food. The company was accused of overpricing supplies and making $30 million in profit.

Nordex was also linked to the activities of the Kolumb company, which was accused of illegally exporting 30,000 tons of refined copper from Russia in the mid-1990s. Luchansky claimed that he wanted to help sculptor Zurab Tsereteli and maintain good relations with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. This friendship would later become the center of another scandal.

From 2003 to 2011, the Moscow Automobile Company (MAC), controlled by Luchansky, managed ZIL. After the termination of the agreement, ZIL sued MAC for about 1.1 billion rubles but lost the case.

In 1993, Luchansky met with U.S. President Bill Clinton at a fundraiser for the Democratic Party, and in 1995, he received an invitation to a new dinner with the president, which was subsequently revoked due to suspicions of the businessman's ties to organized crime.

In the mid-1990s, Luchansky was suspected of involvement in the illegal transportation of weapons on an An-124 transport aircraft belonging to Nordex. The entrepreneur claimed that he had never traded in weapons.

In 1994, Russian Deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Yegorov told the U.S. Senate that Nordex was effectively headed by a Chechen named Umar, whose brother was linked to drug mafia. The Interior Ministry later stated it was a mistake.

In 1996, the American magazine Time, in an investigation into Russian organized crime, called Luchansky a man "whom many consider the world's most dangerous uncharged criminal." In 1999, the British newspaper The Times linked him to money laundering and organized crime. Luchansky sued the newspaper and won the libel case.

In its 1996 investigation, Time described Luchansky's contacts with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, and representatives of Boris Yeltsin's administration.

In 2021, Luchansky claimed that in early 1993, he financially supported Gavriil Popov and Yegor Gaidar.

• 0
• 1
• 2
• 1
• 1
• 1
• 0
• 0