Bruce Rappaport

Baruch "Bruce" Rappaport (February 15, 1922 – January 8, 2010) was an international banker and financier.

He was born in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine to Russian-Jewish emigre parents.

Bruce Rappaport was involved in banking, industry, and politics on the island of Antigua.

Jean Goutchkov, also spelled Ivan Guchkov (Иван Гучков; born 1954 Paris, France), who is a descendant of Alexander Guchkov, worked at Intermaritime Bank of New York before becoming managing director at Ferrier Lullin which was acquired by the Julius Baer Group in 2005 and then worked at HSBC.

Goutchkov primarily serviced wealthy Russian clients.

His Bank of New York-InterMaritime and the 1966 founded Inter Maritime Bank -Bank of New York, Geneva were closely involved in the ownership of the Vyborg port and shipyard prior to Ilya Traber (Илья Трабер) with support from Alexander Dobrovinsky (Александр Добровинский) gaining ownership of the facilities in 1994.

In 1980, a Rappaport controlled company by the name of National Petroleum Ltd purchased 440,000 shares of the West Indies Oil Company (WIOC) for $6,000,000 from the country of Antigua.

The deal was negotiated by the former prime minister of Antigua, Lester Bird.

In 1982, Rappaport filed the required paperwork to declare his 7.5% ownership of Bank of New York.

In April 1983, Rappaport formed Swiss American Bank Ltd., later renamed Global Bank of Commerce, Ltd., and became the first licensed bank in Antigua governed by the International Business Corporations (IBC) Act of 1982.

In the 1990s, United States government authorities accused Swiss American Bank and the Swiss American National Bank, which were both located in Antigua, of money laundering proceeds from illicit drug profits.

The company was later sued by the United States for failure to release forfeited funds from one of its account holders.

The lawsuit stemmed from a plea agreement with John E. Fitzgerald, who admitted to laundering $7,000,000 through numerous shell corporations and eventually deposited the funds in Swiss American Bank.

Swiss American Bank, instead of returning the money to the United States Government, paid $5 million to the government of Antigua and Barbuda and deposited $880,000 into a bank account held at the Bank of Bermuda.

Lester Bird, the former Prime Minister of Antigua, later told the US government, "We can't get you the records, they were destroyed in the hurricane".

In 1990, Rappaport met with Mikhail Gorbachev who supported Rappaport's subsequent efforts in the modernization of 30 Soviet shipyards.

Rappaport was the only foreign investor in the projects.

In 1994, the Bank of New York (BoNY) in which Rappaport held its largest stake was assisted by Rappaport's Inter-Maritime Bank (IMB), Geneva through their joint venture the Bank of New York Inter-Maritime to give BoNY's chairman J. Carter Bacot contacts for access to Russia.

His Inter Maritime Bank -Bank of New York, Geneva had no branch in Antigua.

Boston attorney William Shaw McDermott represented Rappaport's interests in the United States through the Bank of New York - Inter Maritime Bank.

On December 3, 1997, Bruce Rappaport was appointed as Antigua and Barbuda's ambassador to the country of Russia.

On August 19, 1999, the Bank of New York (BoNY) admitted to co-operating with an investigation into a $10 billion money-laundering operation.

Bruce Rappaport was a focus of the investigation and also his other bank, Bank of New York-InterMaritime, a Swiss bank that conducted a large amount of Russian business.

Allegedly, his Bank of New York-Inter Maritime had money laundered money from Benex which had ties to Semion Mogilevich.

In addition to Bruce Rappaport, another Bank of New York (BoNY) employee, Natasha Kagalovsky, who is married to Konstantin Kagalovsky, was a focus of investigations.

In 1999, a shareholder lawsuit was filed against the Bank of New York.

In the complaint the accusations against Rappaport, and Bank of New York, included money laundering, accusations of Russian organized crime involvement, and described Rappaport as "an international financier of questionable background".

On March 1, 2006, the government of Antigua and Barbuda brought legal action against its former prime minister Lester Bird, Bruce Rappaport, and other defendants.

The lawsuit contended that Swiss American Bank, Bruce Rappaport, and others misappropriated over $41,000,000.

In 2006, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda (GOAB), sued many former government officials and Bruce Rappaport.

The suit alleged that Bruce Rappaport embezzled $14 million via his role in re-negotiating the desalinization plant.

The cable states,

(c) The list of malefactors in the case is a veritable who's who from the Lester Bird government—Bird himself, senior party MP Asot Michael, former Antiguan High Commissioner to the UK Ronald Sanders (diplomat), Finance Minister John St. Luce, Treasury chief Keith Hurst, Public Utilities Minister Robin Yearwood, and Antiguan Ambassador to Russia and Israel Bruce Rappaport, along with some minor officials and ancillary characters.

The firm's findings are still preliminary pending interviews with both the original lender (Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) Japan) and some of the accused, but the documentary and interview evidence obtained so far—including from a raid on Asot Michael's personal files—appears to be compelling for at least several of the key players.

In February 2009, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda announced a settlement agreement.

Bruce Rappaport agreed to repay $12 million of the embezzled funds.

On May 30, 2010, the government of Antigua and Barbuda, using a $68 million loan from the Venezuelan firm, PDVSA, repurchased all of the shares to WOIC from National Petroleum Ltd

Bruce Rappaport, Maurice Sarfati, and Yair Klein were involved in the Guns for Antigua scandal which involved the shipment of Israeli-made weapons through Antigua to the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia.

The affair was exposed by the Louis Blom-Cooper Royal Commission, following the discovery that several murders in Colombia had been perpetrated with Israeli guns that had been shipped through Antigua and were ostensibly for the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force, which is equipped for free by the United States.

Rappaport provided the financing, and the land on Antigua, for the melon farm that was used to funnel the weapons from Israel to Colombia via Antigua.