A special investigation by Atty. John Loftus has revealed the following:

After the collapse of communism, Mr. Cherney took over a handful of decrepit Soviet smelters, obtained international investment, and made them productive and profitable. This was the source of his fortune.

Back then, in 1993-95, along with many other industrialists, he fell victim to the wave of slander in Russia - the so-called "compromat", literally meaning "compromising evidence". The Russian term refers to a campaign that seeks to remove a business competitor by means of besmirching his name. Many Russian businessmen bought media outlets expressly for the purpose of "slaying" competition in the realm of the public opinion. Then they would blackmail the target by threatening to pass the fabricated materials to the West and thus ruin the target's international reputation - unless he shares some of his earnings.

These tactics are described in detail by Mr. Yakov Kedmi, former head of Nativ, an Israeli agency that acted on the territory of the former Soviet Union and provided support to the Israeli intelligence services. (Appendix 1)

This was how the "compromat" on Michael Cherney, fabricated by Russian media and claiming he was linked to organized crime, found its way into the files of Israeli law enforcement, and further into the files of other intelligence services. (Appendix 35)

In late 1990's the Russian law enforcement carefully investigated the compromat against Mr. Cherney and concluded it was completely groundless. ( Appendix 2, Appendix 3-a, Appendix 3-b, Appendix 4, Appendix 5, Appendix 6) All five Russian law enforcement services confirmed officially that Mr. Cherney had never been involved in organized crime, never indicted in Russia or any other post-Soviet country (further referred to as "Russia" for convenience's sake), and was never a suspect in a criminal investigation.

When the Russian Mafia - a network of unscrupulous competitors, corrupt police officers and politicians - threatened Mr. Cherney with compromat and demanded a share of his profits, he turned them down and moved to Israel in 1994.

In 1995, after he settled in Israel, the Russian Mafia took out a contract on Mr. Cherney in order to take over his companies. The assassination was contracted out to a private investigation firm run by three retired senior Israeli police and secret service officers. The retired officers sub-contracted the killing out to a common criminal, who promptly turned them in.

To the credit of the Israeli police, they supplied the would-be assassin with a wiretap, recorded the retired police officials, and convicted two of them for the attempted murder of Mr. Cherney. The third police official escaped to Russia under mysterious circumstances.

On July 13, 1998, Israeli Police International Crime Unit (YAHBAL) passed to the Bulgarian security service a false report (Appendix 7) that Cherney is involved in a murder of a "son of an undisclosed senior Bulgarian cabinet member".

In response Gen. Atanas Atanasov, the head of the Bulgarian security service, had Cherney barred from entering the country.

This curiously coincided with the attempts of corrupt high-ranking Bulgarian officials, headed by former Bulgarian PM I. Kostov and former Finance Minister M. Radev, to extort from Mr. Cherney a part of Mobitel, at that time the only private cell phone company in the country, created by Mr. Cherney. General Atanasov's unlawful action played directly into the extortionists' hands.

After an investigation and Mr. Cherney's lawsuit, the Bulgarian Supreme Court confirmed that the accusations were groundless and revoked the ban on Mr. Cherney's entering the country and conducting business activity there (Appendix 8)

Bulgarian Attorney General (Appendix 9), Chief of Bulgarian Investigation Agency (Appendix 10-a) and Bulgarian Ministry of Justice (Appendix 10-b) confirmed officially that Mr. Cherney had never committed a crime on Bulgarian territory.

Moreover, on November 11, 2002, General Kirill Radev, the Chief of Organized Crime Unit, stated officially that a thorough investigation conducted by Bulgarian authorities revealed no evidence to support the letter from Israeli intelligence; moreover, the crime the letter had referred to have never taken place! (Appendix 11)

Gen. A. Atanasov, the former head of the Bulgarian security service, who acted against Mr. Cherney in spite of patent falseness of YAHBAL's report, was subsequently disgraced, recalled from retirement and got a 20-month suspended sentence from the Bulgarian court for this and other crimes. ( Appendix 12, Appendix 13)

Yet following the same unsavory pattern, from 1996 to 2003 Israeli Justice Ministry and Prosecution kept sending false reports about Michael Cherney to foreign police departments, FBI included (Appendix 14)

These letters stated that Mr. Cherney is a "head of Russian organized crime" and is wanted in Russia for murder, drug trafficking and racketeering.

Some of these letters emphasized Cherney's links to Russian businessmen A. Malevsky, A. Tokhtahunov and others, described as "members of the Russian organized crime".

Some of these individuals have indeed had criminal episodes in their past. However, M. Cherney was just a social friend of the mentioned individuals or met most of them just accidentally - once or twice in his life. Cherney, being an international industrialist, has likewise socially befriended hundreds of political and business leaders all over the world.

Some of these letters were based on the testimony given by a certain Jalol Haidarov; a Russian-Moslem criminal linked the Chechen Wahhabist mafia, wanted by Russian police (Appendices 15, 16)

In the past, Jalol Haidarov was fired from his job as a smelter manager for theft. At that time Mr. Cherney was one of the shareholders of that smelter. Subsequently, on a number of occasions Haidarov attempted to take over the plant with the help of armed gangs (Appendix 17) and was thwarted by a massive police intervention.

Later, Haidarov and his accomplice M. Zhivilo, filed an unsuccessful law suit in the US court (Appendix 18, Appendix 19) against Rusal, Russia's largest aluminum producer, where Mr. Cherney had been a major stockholder until 20001.

In spite of two arrest warrants issued in Russia for Haidarov who had been indicted for drug trafficking, rape, assault and conspiracy for murder (Appendices 15, 16) , in 2001 YAHBAL offered Haidarov a protected status in Israel. In return, the latter provided an affidavit falsely alleging that Mr. Cherney had committed crimes on Russian territory.

As mentioned above, virtually every level of the Russian government, from head of their Organized Crime Unit (Appendix 2) to the head of Russian Bureau of Interpol (Appendix 3-a, Appendix 3-b), from the Head of Justice Ministry's Investigation Committee (Appendix 4) to Attorney General (Appendix 5, Appendix 6) confirmed in affidavits that Mr. Cherney was not now or ever connected to the Russian mafia in the slightest.

Affidavits further confirm that Mr. Cherney has never been suspected, investigated, wanted, arrested or charged with any criminal offense in Russia.

The same was confirmed by the affidavits from Ministries of Justice of Ukraine (Appendix 20-a, Appendix 20-b) where he was born and Uzbekistan (Appendix 21) where he lived until his emigration to Israel.

Only in 2000 Israel's Ministry of Justice for the first time confirmed that it had never investigated Mr. Cherney for the abovementioned crimes (murder, drug trafficking and racketeering) (Appendix 22-a)

In 2001 YAHBAL also had to admit in a court hearing that it had never investigated Mr. Cherney for on suspicions of murder, assaults, blackmail and threats. (Appendix 22-b)

Thus Israeli police admitted that for years it had been knowingly and deliberately besmirching Michael Cherney's reputation, sending reports to all Western law enforcement agencies, in which they falsely stated that Israel was investigating Mr. Cherney for these serious crimes.

The Attorney General officials in charge of the Cherney case stated unambiguously that the secret information collected in the course of the investigation had not justified even opening the case. (Appendix 23-a).

Finally in 2004, Israeli court has expressed its astonishment that in spite of all the above-mentioned facts YAHBAL still persists in hunting Mr. Cherney as a member of "Russian mafia". (Appendix 23-b)

At this point I must say that as the head of Intelligence Summit and a person who has devoted his life to international investigations, I am extremely concerned regarding the Michael Cherney case. The facts of the matter point to a grave situation where, guided by a personal vendetta or greed or sheer dilettantism, a few law officials in a law-abiding country (this time it is Israel) can easily manipulate international intelligence networks. It is enough, as YAHBAL did, to send out innocent-looking requests for information to friendly police departments all over the world and mention that the person in question is suspected of serious crimes. Later, as it happened in Cherney's case, the courts may find that the requests are based on false information and that these policemen never investigated or even planned to investigate the person for these crimes; but the requests have already extracted their toll: the person is blacklisted in all the countries where the requests were addressed. Law enforcement authorities of various countries open his case, gather information from tainted media sources with slander paid for by his competitors, and continue to circulate this "information" endlessly among them. Thus the special services of democratic countries commit two unforgivable errors:

•  they destroy innocent people's reputations and lives, and

•  they waste intelligence resources, vitally needed to fight terror and real threats, like drug trade, on investigating chimeras manufactured by a couple of rogue cops.

To illustrate the second thesis, I'll quote from two Interpol documents, taken out of voluminous correspondence on the subject of Cherney. Endlessly repeating words "involvement in organized crime", Interpol officers from different countries admit on the same pages that "involvement of Cherney is not proved", "there is no confirmed information", that their "inquiries have not revealed any evidence of criminal activity by Cherney", and "to date no evidence has been supplied of any crime committed by Cherney". (Appendix 36)

However, as if to confirm the effectiveness of destroying a competitor's reputation by entering his name in Interpol's international correspondence, the governments of Switzerland, Austria, France, UK and Canada acted on these false reports and harassed Mr. Cherney during his visits or denied him entry.

Although through 1999 Mr. Cherney had been entering the US without problems, American government issued a similar ban, based on such letters.

It's important to mention that M. Cherney sued, and won preliminary court cases in Austria and France, related to his right to enter these countries. (Appendix 24-a, Appendix 24-b, Appendix 25)

Surprisingly YAHBAL, perhaps guided by "us-against-them" reasoning, refuses to acknowledge its abuse and persists in circulating "information" on Cherney being "a dangerous international criminal".

Besides misleading Interpol, FBI, and other international law enforcement agencies, for 4 years (1997-2001) YAHBAL had repeatedly given false testimony before the Israeli court, alleging they had investigated Mr. Cherney for some murders committed in Russia, for drug trade and money laundering, and that Russia had an arrest warrant against Mr. Cherney. (Appendices 26-a, 26-b). Under these pretexts YAHBAL has obtained a court order that allowed them to violate the private life of Mr. Cherney and his family, and keep him for more than 4 years under the tight round-the-clock surveillance.

Only in 2002 in Israeli court it was confirmed that YAHBAL had never investigated Cherney on suspicions of murder, drug trade, and other earlier mentioned crimes. Thus YAHBAL mislead the Israeli court for obtaining permissions to wiretap Mr. Cherney 's phones. (Appendix 27)

Finally, in 2003 the Israeli Attorney General's office also officially admitted that they had never had an arrest warrant from Russia - the same warrant they had repeatedly referred to in numerous letters to foreign police forces, including the FBI, as well as to Israeli courts while requesting the wiretapping order. (Appendix 28)

Altogether police recorded 58,000 conversations of Mr. Cherney by tapping his phones - his home, his office, his friends' and relatives' - on the basis of the court order issued under false pretenses.

However, on the basis of these 58,000 illegally conducted wiretaps, Israeli police charged Mr. Cherney with two laughable economic charges: bribing a member of the Eilat City Council in order to receive "discounts in Eilat's hotels and restaurants", and providing money for buying the shares of the state-owned Bezeq telephone company.

Suspiciously reminiscent of the Bulgarian case, the charges coincided with the privatization of Bezeq and Cherney's competitors' attempts to muscle him out of the Israeli market.

As soon as Israeli Attorney General Edna Arbel, who supported YAHBAL's misdoings in spite of the strong objection from Israeli prosecutors who called Mr. Cherney's case a "disgrace of Israeli legal system" (Appendix 29) left her position, the Eilat case was withdrawn and closed by Prosecution (Appendix 30). The second charge they had brought is headed in the same direction.

In 2002 Mr. Stanislav Yazhemsky, YAHBAL officer in charge of wiretapping, exposed the illegal actions of YAHBAL's head, Gen. Moshe Mizrahi (Appendix 31)

According to Yazhemsky's testimony, General Mizrahi ordered wiretapping and transcribing of the private conversations of prominent Israeli politicians, including Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, Natan Scharansky, and Avigdor Liberman, thus effectively turning YAHBAL into secret political police.

In late 2002, Israel's Ministry of Justice recommended opening a criminal investigation of General Mizrahi. ( Appendix 32)

Finally, in late 2004, General Mizrahi was disgraced and removed from his position. (Appendix 33)

Mr. Cherney has taken out ads in every Israeli newspaper challenging the courts to come forward openly with any evidence linking him in any way to organized crime.

In 2005 Head of Economic Crimes department of Israeli Prosecution Shimon Dolan has publicly stated that his office has no evidence connecting Mr. Cherney to organized crime in any way, and has never suspected or investigated Mr. Cherney in connection to these allegations (Appendix 34).

However, the US Department of State refuses to lift its visa ban on Mr. Cherney, relying on the now discredited information from such compromised sources as the wanted criminal Haidarov, the disgraced police generals Mizrahi and Atanasov, as well on the false reports from Interpol and other European law enforcement: reports, based on the fabricated - as demonstrated above - evidence.

I strongly believe that illegally made wiretaps of Mr. Cherney's phone conversations, which Mizrahi and Atanasov may cite to the US as "incriminating hard evidence", do not contain anything illegal.

I would suggest that US authorities conduct an independent examination of the tapes, rather than rely on the written "summaries" of the tapes apparently provided to the US by the same above mentioned disgraced generals.

My investigation shows that Mr. Cherney became a victim of unscrupulous attempts to wrest away his capital by Mafia groups that include corrupt politicians, policemen, and competitors, who have been deliberately misleading various intelligence services to their own nefarious ends.

My investigation shows that Mr. Cherney has taken a most principled stand against this Mafia and against a small group of corrupt officials.

According to the results of my investigation, supported by dozens of documents (see the list below), Mr. Cherney does not, nor ever did, present a danger to American national security.

To the contrary, his good character and extensive contributions to the US war on terror are well known.

All of the above compels me to call on the US State Department to correct its mistake and issue Mr. Cherney a US visa.

So is Michael Cherney ( Mikhail Chernoy ) guilty of murder, drug dealing, being a member of the Russian mafia and stealing candy from children?

We suggest that you find and interview in person those who work for the Russian Information Centre. If you can’t find these “ghosts” then please refer to the above facts.

That PRNewswire and other business media placement organizations have been used unknowingly for libel and slander is nothing less than a crime. That Michael Cherney (Mikhail Chernoy ) has been accused of stealing both the North and South Poles, makes only makes for a good Disney movie.

The only thing that Michael Cherney ( Mikhail Chernoy ) is guilty of is working hard, being intelligent and creative, being a loving and devoted husband and father and providing for the welfare of those who have suffered from terror attacks in Israel and worldwide.