A CZECH-BORN fugitive is relying on Irish citizenship he received in the controversial “passports for investment” scheme in an effort to avoid charges in the US of bribing top officials in Azerbaijan, a post-Soviet state on the Caspian sea.
Viktor Kozeny, who has since 2005 successfully fought extradition to the US from his home in the Bahamas, is accused by the US authorities of paying millions of dollars in bribes in an unsuccessful effort to win control of Azerbaijan’s state oil company in 1998.
The scheme attracted a $200,000 (€143,000) investment in 1998 from former US senator George Mitchell, now US president Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy. Mr Mitchell told a New York court last month in the trial of a former Kozeny associate that the Northern Ireland peace negotiations he was chairing at the time of the investment was an “all-consuming effort” for him.
The former associate, businessman Frederic Bourke, was convicted by a jury of conspiring with Mr Kozeny to bribe Azeri leaders, including former president Heydar Aliyev, to encourage the sale of Socar, the state oil firm.
Witnesses told of flights into Azerbaijan with millions of dollars stuffed in suitcases, shakedowns in state offices, and of dealings with Chechen mobsters who provided protection in Azerbaijan to Mr Kozeny’s company.
Mr Mitchell said he accepted Bourke’s advice that participation in Mr Kozeny’s company was a risk worth taking but paid “little or no” attention to the investment as that part of his life “wasn’t really on my radar scheme” at the time.
In testimony, Mr Mitchell said he was unaware of the bribes even after meeting Mr Aliyev. In 1999, he withdrew from the investment and resigned from the board of Mr Kozeny’s US firm after Bourke told him he was suspicious Mr Kozeny was involved in fraud. Mr Mitchell said he told Bourke “you should just get out” at that time.
Bourke was found guilty of conspiracy to violate the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and of making false statements to federal law enforcement officials, but was acquitted of money laundering. A co-founder of handbag firm Dooney Bourke, Bourke denied knowledge of bribery and his lawyer said an appeal was “very likely”.
He was accused of personally investing more than $5 million in the scheme by Mr Kozeny’s Oily Rock company in the knowledge that he was bribing Azeri officials.
Prosecutors said he “engaged with enthusiasm” in the bribery scheme and, on a number of occasions, asked Mr Kozeny’s other associates whether he was “paying the Azeris enough money”.
Mr Kozeny has been a fugitive from the Czech authorities on separate fraud charges since 2003, eight years after he was granted Irish citizenship by the Rainbow coalition following an £1 million (€1.27 million) investment in a software company called Irish Medical Systems.
Nora Owen, Fine Gael minister for justice when Mr Kozeny was given a certificate of naturalisation, told RTÉ in 1998 that “we got an assurance that people were not wanted by the law in the country where they live” when issuing his passport. Irish Medical Systems was sold to a British firm in 1999.
Benjamin Brafman, a New York-based lawyer for Mr Kozeny, said the verdict did not affect his client, who was arrested in the Bahamas on foot of the US charges in 2005 and freed on bail 19 months later.
Mr Brafman told US reporters that Mr Kozeny has “always maintained that the FCPA does not apply to him because he is not a citizen of the United States”.
Although the Government has, in the past, examined means of rescinding Mr Kozeny’s Irish citizenship, it is understood he still holds an Irish passport.
Mr Brafman did not respond to queries from The Irish Times.
The late Heydar Aliyev dominated Azeri politics for more than 30 years. His son Ilham Aliyev, described in court as another intended bribe recipient, inherited power from him in a disputed 2003 election.
Mr Kozeny is charged with leading the bribery conspiracy to ensure his group would gain a controlling interest in Socar and reap “huge profits” from its resale.
