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bne September 2017
the NYT pointed to as the most likely source of North Korea’s engines.
This casts doubt on Turchinov’s claims that Ukraine’s export control service prevents any breaches of sanctions. Instead, it raises the possibility that organized crime interests long present in Ukraine’s state arms trading sector are actively scheming to breach international sanctions.
Address to depress
That North Korea acquired its latest and most successful rocket engines from Ukraine remains a matter of conjecture. But there is a track record since Ukrainian independence of sanctions-busting behaviour relating to both North Korea and Iran that makes it too large a risk to ignore. And a lot of this sanctions-busting activity was based at the address of Ukraine’s State Export Control Service – the body tasked with combating the country’s arms trafficking.
Thus, Lunov in the late 1990s ran a firm called Antonov- Aerotrack Aviaservis. Antonov-Aerotrack Aviaservis was registered at the same address, and even with the same telephone number, as GST Ukraine has today, ie. the same address as the State Export Control Service.
“Turchinov’s findings look like a whitewash”
Lunov’s 1990s firm was a subsidiary of Antonov Aerotrack Aviation, a controversial cargo flier partly owned by Ukrainian state defence and aviation firms. Alleged organised crime interests, including the notorious Austrian firm Nordex, run by controversial businessman Grigory Louchansky, owned
the rest. “The CIA reported that it [Nordex] deals in various schemes from illegal arms trading to money laundering for the Russian mob,” the US Embassy in Kyiv wrote in a Crime Digest circular from April 1999.
In 1996, CIA sources told Time magazine that in 1995 Nordex had flown Scud missile launcher parts from North Korea
to Iran, using a Ukrainian-registered Antonov Aerotrack plane, via Kyiv. CIA sources also told Time that Nordex had transferred nuclear materials to Iran in 1993-94.
The articles made no mention of any personal involvement by Lunov or Kaplunenko. Kaplunenko himself in the interview said he had no connection to any alleged wrongdoing at Antonov Aerotrack or GST Ukraine.
In 2001, the sanctions-busting network apparently struck again: Kazakh cargo flyer GST Aero allegedly smuggled a Ukrainian X-55 ‘Kent’ nuclear-capable cruise missile out of Ukraine to Iran. The facts were established by a later investigation by Ukraine’s parliamentary organised crime
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committee, and an associated criminal investigation leading to charges. GST Aero was renamed East Wing before its involvement in the 2009 attempt to smuggle 35 tonnes of North Korean weaponry out to Iran in breach of sanctions.
“Nordex had flown Scud missile launcher parts from North Korea to Iran”
None of this means that this network transferred Pivdenmash rocket engines to North Korea. But it does mean that an infrastructure is in place in Ukraine that could do so –
and it is located at the very heart of Ukraine’s system of export controls. This is what Turchinov should have been investigating instead of conducting what looks like a whitewash.
bne has a full roster of columnists and opinion-makers, among them:
Mark Galeotti Liam Halligan Suna Erdem
Chris Weafer David Cecire Ben Aris
Selected headlines from the past month:
· ALACO DISPATCHES: Croatian tourist boom belies tensions · COMMENT: Central European stock markets still look good,
while Russia's is improving
You can find all bne’s comment at
www.intellinews.com/opinion
www.bne.eu