The KGB is alleged to have spun off a series of "ghost"
departments to deal with global drug dealing, weapons smuggling and
sales, white slavery, money counterfeiting, and nuclear material.
In a desperate effort at self-preservation, other KGB departments are
said to have conducted the illicit sales of raw materials (including
tons of precious metals) for hard currency, and the laundering of the
proceeds through financial institutions in the West (in Cyprus, Israel,
Greece, the USA, Switzerland, and Austria). Specially established
corporate shells and "banks" were used to launder money, mainly on
behalf of the party nomenklatura. All said, the emerging KGB-crime
cartel has been estimated to own or control c. 40% of Russian GDP as
early as 1994, having absconded with c. $100 billion of state assets.
Under the dual pretexts of "crime busting" and "fighting terrorism",
the Interior Ministry and FSB used this period to construct massive,
parallel, armies - better equipped and better trained than the official
one.
Many genuinely retired KGB personnel found work as programmers,
entrepreneurs, and computer engineers in the Russian private sector
(and, later, in the West) - often financed by the KGB itself.
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