When privatisation of plants started, talk began that Russia was a Klondike for the entrepreneurs who lived there; I mean those out of the emigrants… Four branches can be called major: chemical fertilizers and the notorious carbamide, aluminium, ferrous metallurgy, and petroleum. All this was for a trifle… These things had their world market prices which were way over the odds, for which they could be acquired or which could be made under the terms of privatisation of those plants. That is, people became millionaires overnight. There was not yet any mechanism for exporting foreign currency from Russia, so Russian entrepreneurs looked for companions with a Western account, by acquaintance or just by guesswork. They found sane emigrants with American passports, and only then, when Russia sorted itself out a bit, the second process started – oozing out American partners – and then showdowns began, shootings began, and the mafia simultaneously became stronger… And of all this team, Mikhail Chernoy and his brother Lev were the most criminalised couple.

It all started from the time when Moody, Deputy Director of the FBI, published his first list of criminal organisations… This all happened, to my mind, in 1989… He was associated with Ivankov, associated with the Izmaylovo criminal gang, and something else… That’s how that person got into the range of suspicious personalities and was under continuous surveillance of the American intelligence agencies. In 1989, there was Moody’s report which mentioned him; in 1994, it was the Investigational Department of the FBI where both of them were mentioned as the major underworld authorities… I’m giving you the milestones… in 1996, they – Lev and Mikhail – appeared in an Interpol report. Why did they become notorious personalities? Because Kislin was one of the best pick of the emigration; he was a member of all public organisations; he was photographed with Clinton, with Giuliani… and the year of 1999 was the pre-election year. Kislin gave money to the Republicans, though he also gave money to Clinton – he gave it to everybody for the election… But the Democrats jumped on him for the fact that he was supporting Giuliani, and there was an organisation called Center for Public Integrity, and an article appeared where it was mentioned that Kislin was such a villain, that he was supporting the Republican Party, while he was a mere mafioso himself, thus whose services the Republican Party used – the Russian mafia… Together with Kislin, Mikhail Chernoy was mentioned there; FBI and Interpol reports state that Trans Commodities Inc. laundered millions of dollars and was used for fraudulent banking documents by the Chernoy brothers in the early 1990’s, since the brothers had seized the most part of the Russian metallurgical industry, especially the aluminium industry, via fraud, money laundering, and murders, no less than that…