NORDEX
In 1990, ADAZIMPEX founded NORDEX in Austria, with Grigory Luchansky as its President. NORDEX specialized in exporting metals and minerals from the CIS countries and attracting foreign investment to modernize post-Soviet industrial enterprises.
By 1993, NORDEX surpassed its main Western competitors in terms of turnover with the former USSR, and its annual income was estimated at billions of dollars.
This success attracted attention to NORDEX and made it the object of a new witch hunt. After the Cold War, many Western intelligence agencies redirected their resources, originally allocated to the fight against the USSR, but now no longer relevant, to the fight against the so-called "Russian mafia." One of the reasons for the vigorous fight against this, mostly fictitious or blown out of proportion, threat was the unwillingness to reduce the "Russian" budgets of the intelligence agencies.
While real organized crime groups from the CIS countries were difficult to penetrate, NORDEX, as a transparent and successful Western company created to operate in the former USSR market, easily fit into the stereotype of the mysterious “Russian mafia”, making it a convenient target for this new witch hunt.
NORDEX’s achievements were maliciously attributed not to the effective management of the company, which employed leading Russian experts and economists, but to imaginary secret schemes or clandestine agreements with the KGB, the former Communist Party of the USSR, or with criminal organizations.
According to TIME magazine, in 1994, the US intelligence services instructed law enforcement agencies in major EU countries to launch a joint campaign to discredit NORDEX and its head, Grigory Luchansky.
Since 1994, Grigory Luchansky and members of his family have repeatedly been discriminated against by consulates of several EU countries, which have refused them entry or visa extensions – always without explanation.
Following “unofficial recommendations” from US government agencies, numerous large US and EU companies and banks severed business ties with NORDEX.
As a result of this aggressive smear campaign, NORDEX’s operations were virtually frozen by 1995, forcing Grigory Luchansky to focus entirely on protecting the reputation of NORDEX and its management, to the detriment of business development.
THE WITCH HUNT
As it turned out years later, 14 Interpol units from different countries were investigating NORDEX and Grigory Luchansky — based solely on false and slanderous media reports.
For the media, both in the West and in Russia, the “Russian mafia” became a new sensational topic, articles about which did not require verification or evidence. Writing and posting them on the Internet was a matter of minutes. In addition, the Internet was just coming into fashion, replacing print media, and everything that ended up on-line was trusted.
The secret services and competitors used this internet trash as pretexts to persecute Grigory Luchansky and NORDEX. It was a long-term, politically motivated campaign aimed at destroying the reputation and business of Luchansky and his company — a real witch hunt.
Allegations were based on the endless circulation of unverified rumors, and therefore numerous investigations into the activities of Luchansky and NORDEX have yielded no results: no criminal cases, no trials, and, of course, no convictions.
Forced to fight slander and disinformation, Grigory Luchansky and NORDEX initiated 26 lawsuits against the media and government agencies in different countries - and won all 26 cases.
In 1996, US State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, and in 1997, FBI Director Louis Freeh publicly confirmed at press conferences in Tel Aviv and Moscow, respectively, that the United States had no specific charges against NORDEX or its management.
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