CASE LINKS RUSSIAN SUB, COLOMBIA DRUGS

MIAMI--It was a typical night at Porky's, a strip joint known for its
Russian dancers in the seedy Miami suburb of Hialeah.

The girls were grinding on the dance floor while, inside the club's inner
office, cut off from the driving rhythms, owner Ludwig Fainberg was talking
business. Big business, federal prosecutors now say: drug business, Russian
mafia business and how the two were coming together in a single deal.

And the U.S. government was listening.

According to documents recently filed in federal court here, on that night
in April 1995 Fainberg explained to an undercover U.S. drug enforcement
agent a deal he was brokering between Russian organized crime and Colombian
drug lords to provide a $35-million Soviet navy submarine to the biggest
cocaine cartel in South America.

Fainberg, a Russian immigrant from Israel better known as Tarzan, had been
boasting about the submarine deal for weeks, according to FBI affidavits
made public earlier this year in Ft. Lauderdale federal court. Just three
weeks before, at a nearby restaurant, Fainberg had introduced the undercover
agent to Juan Almeida, a Cuban-born broker of "exotic" automobiles, aircraft
and vessels, who prosecutors allege had contacts in Colombia's drug
underworld.

Together, Fainberg and Almeida had already supplied the Colombians with half
a dozen Soviet MI-8 military helicopters that the two men had obtained
through military contacts in Russia for $1 million each, according to court
records in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in Florida in
September.

But that night at Porky's, Fainberg pulled out a map of the western United
States and told the agent how the Russian submarine, capable of carrying 40
tons of cocaine per trip, would bring a new global nexus between the
Russians and Colombians to the very heart of Southern California.

In his sworn affidavit, FBI agent Anthony Cuomo said Fainberg explained "how
the submarine was going to transport cocaine from Mexico, passing by the
U.S. naval station in San Diego . . . and unloading the cocaine off the
coast of Santa Barbara."

The conversation was one of 11,000 in several languages recorded through
wiretaps and hidden microphones at Porky's and elsewhere in 1995.

Fainberg and Almeida were indicted on federal racketeering charges in
January 1997. It was unclear from court records--and prosecutors refused to
comment on--why charges were not filed until 1997 and why the submarine deal
was never completed.

Fainberg and Almeida have denied through their attorneys that they committed
any crimes. And U.S. authorities have been careful not to cast Fainberg as a
member of a Russian crime syndicate: They describe him as an "associate" of
Russian mob bosses here and overseas.

Extending the Reach of the Narcotics Trade

But U.S. authorities say the case illustrates how Russian organized crime
and its associates linked up with Colombia's top drug barons in a
partnership to extend the reach and firepower of the international narcotics
trade.

The new ties potentially could combine millions of dollars in annual cocaine
and heroin proceeds from the United States and Europe with the awesome Cold
War military assets of the former Soviet Union.

In interviews, U.S. authorities say the partnership is driven by prolonged
economic crisis, official corruption and lax military controls in Russia and
other former Soviet Bloc states and the increasing sophistication and
technological demands of drug traffickers in the Americas.

One affidavit unsealed in Fainberg's case stated that already in 1995 the
Drug Enforcement Administration's "intelligence has identified 47 Eastern
Bloc aircraft, helicopter and fixed-wing, . . . in Colombia, South America,
which are being utilized for the transport of narcotics and of chemicals for
the processing of narcotics."

While there is no hard evidence in court records showing how those Soviet
aircraft reached the Colombian drug cartels, a Times investigation published
in 1996 revealed that as many as 20 Soviet-designed military cargo planes
from Ukraine were sold to drug traffickers.

U.S. law-enforcement officials say several investigations are underway here
and abroad targeting Russian crime bosses and Colombian drug lords--and
their impact on the U.S. drug trade and organized crime. Documents on file
in the Fainberg case provide a detailed look at how U.S. prosecutors and law
enforcement agents say that partnership was forged here in the early and
mid-1990s.

Attorneys for Fainberg and Almeida deny that their clients were part of any
such nexus. Last year, as Fainberg appeared at his bail hearing in a
courtroom packed with his relatives and friends from the Israeli kibbutz
where he lived after fleeing anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union in the early
1970s, his lawyer called the submarine deal "just a pipe dream." And during
Almeida's detention hearing after his 1997 arrest, defense attorney Steven
Chaykin described his client as "a trader."

"He's an entrepreneur in the classic sense of the word. He puts buyers
together with sellers, but there's nothing wrong with that," Chaykin told
the judge. "It's legal. It's lots of what made this country strong: People
that are marketeers like him."

But Chaykin conceded in court that day that his client did broker deals
between Russians and Colombians that took advantage of what he called "a
gold rush when the Communist government fell" in Russia. Suddenly, he said,
Russia had cheap products, including military hardware, for sale and an
ample supply of buyers in South America.

Chaykin insisted, though, that Almeida's deals were between legitimate
buyers and sellers.

After hearing both sides last year, U.S. Magistrate Judge Lurana Snow
released Almeida on bond but ordered Fainberg held without bail, calling the
evidence against him "substantial."

"The defendant personally engaged in foreign travel for the purchase of
helicopters, airplanes and submarines to be used by the Colombian cocaine
suppliers," Snow concluded in ordering Fainberg confined to prison until
trial.

Arrangements Caught on Wiretaps

According to the federal case against the 40-year-old strip-club owner,
Fainberg had transformed Porky's and a Russian restaurant in Miami called
Babushka's into a South Florida headquarters for drug running, prostitution,
money laundering and other criminal activity--as well as a meeting place for
Russian organized crime and drug traffickers.

Quoting from wiretaps and recorded meetings, the court documents in the case
allege that the club owner used his office in 1994 and 1995 to arrange large
shipments of cocaine hidden among shrimp from Ecuador to the United States
and Russia; to transport stolen cigarettes from the states of New York and
Georgia; to organize travel for Russian women to work as prostitutes in
Miami; and to order weapons and armored cars for Russian crime groups in the
United States and abroad.

In court documents, chief federal prosecutor Diana Fernandez and the FBI
agent who coordinated the investigation list more than a dozen meetings and
conversations that Fainberg held with high-ranking Russian crime figures in
Miami and St. Petersburg, Russia, at the time he allegedly was brokering the
submarine sale to the Colombians and other deals in 1995.

The affidavits assert that, just six days after Fainberg showed the
undercover agent the map of the submarine's future drug route to Santa
Barbara, he met in Miami with the leader of Moscow's Luberetsy organized
crime group and agreed to "organize a meeting of all the major Russian
organized crime groups for August 1995 in Miami."

"This meeting would be for the purpose of dividing up the United States into
territories for criminal activities," according to one of the affidavits,
which were used to justify the court-approved wiretaps in 1995 at Porky's
and Babushka's and on Fainberg's cellular phones.

Meeting With Retired Admiral

The court documents in the case, which fill a shelf at the federal
courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., do not indicate whether the Russian
crime summit ever took place here. But wiretap logs, hotel records and other
documents show that Fainberg did travel to Russia in early 1995 with Almeida
and an alleged drug trafficker who also was indicted in the case.

During that trip, the group allegedly used Fainberg's organized crime
contacts to arrange a meeting with a retired Russian vice admiral who had
commanded a submarine force in the Soviet Northern Fleet, according to the
affidavits.

The retired Soviet officer arranged for the group to tour a secret Russian
submarine base in Kronstadt, where they decided on a Tango class model after
viewing a variety of used Soviet submarines that the documents show ranged
in price from $20 million to $75 million. The Tango class sub is a Cold
War-era craft, built to patrol shallow waters, with an underwater cruising
speed of 16 knots.

Although the submarine sale never took place, the affidavits state that,
three years before, Fainberg and Almeida successfully brokered the sale of
the MI-8 helicopters to the Colombians. That sale was made without the
direct involvement of several powerful Russian organized crime groups, the
affidavits state. But it ultimately led to Fainberg's association with
Russian crime bosses, federal agents stated.

"The Russian mob wanted to kill Fainberg for his unauthorized activities,"
the FBI affidavit stated. Then, it added, Fainberg turned to Anzor
Kikalischvili, a businessman whom it described as "one of the most powerful
Russian organized crime figures operating in the United States."

The affidavits stated that Kikalischvili interceded on Fainberg's behalf
with Russian crime bosses. And ever since, the affidavit concluded, Fainberg
has owed favors to him.

Kikalischvili, who was named frequently in the affidavits but not in the
indictment, appeared among the original targets of the federal
investigation, which spanned more than a year and included half a dozen
undercover federal agents and 10 confidential informants. The court records
do not indicate--nor would U.S. prosecutors comment on--why Kikalischvili
was not indicted.

The affidavits quoted from a recorded conversation with one of those
informants, in which "Kikalischvili explained that his organization is
setting up operations in south Florida with him as the top man in charge of
all criminal operations."

"Kikalischvili told [the informant] that he already has over 60 people under
his control in this area," the affidavits said.

And Kikalischvili "also explained that it was important to have someone like
himself in control who could make sure that law enforcement was not alerted
to their activities."

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"