YELTSIN’S SON-IN-LAW TO TESTIFY IN BANK OF NEW YORK SCANDAL?

Leonid Dyachenko, husband of Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin’s younger daughter and his image consultant, has reportedly been asked to testify before a New York grand jury, as has Viktor Khrolenko, head of a company called Belka Trading. The request to testify–made by the New York district attorney’s office, which is investigating alleged money laundering through the Bank of New York in parallel with the FBI. The request followed testimony made by Bank of New York chief Thomas Renyi that Leonid Dyachenko had two accounts at the bank’s branch in the Cayman Islands, through which an estimated US$2.7 million moved. Investigators later determined that the money had been transferred by Belka Trading and another company called East Coast Petroleum.

Dyachenko–Yeltsin’s son-in-law–was reportedly introduced to the heads of Belka Trading in the early 1990s by Valentin Yumashev, the ghost writer of Yeltsin’s memoirs who later became head of the Kremlin administration. Belka was reportedly involved in publishing Yeltsin’s second set of memoirs and Dyachenko became one of the company’s heads in 1994. East Coast Petroleum is reportedly an oil-products trading company which Dyachenko heads. Belka’s attorney recently said that the company and its affiliates are not simply money conduits, but do “real work.” Khrolenko, Belka’s head, also became head of a firm called Mediatek, one of whose founders was Sibneft. The oil exported by Belka Trading and East Coast Petroleum belonged mainly to Sibneft and Kondpetroleum (Vedemosti, October 4; Washington Post, October 1).

HAVE CHECHEN REBELS GOTTEN HOLD OF STINGER MISSILES?