And The Rich Shall Fall

Viktor Kozeny a 32-year-old Czech expatriate led 20 American investors in a bold play to seize control of nearly 1 percent of the world's oil.The plan was brazen: backing from hedge fund Omega Advisors, insurer AIG, institutions such as Columbia University and General Electric, and investors like handbag mogul Frederic Bourke and ex-U.S. Senator George Mitchell, Kozeny wanted to buy the state-owned oil producer in Azerbaijan -- and then sell it at 20 times the price. It was the deal of a lifetime. U.S. prosecutors would later call the failed venture the "most audacious and most corrupt" ever attempted in the former Soviet Union. With his American partners dreaming of oil riches, the suave, self-made Kozeny lured them into a massive bribery scheme. By the time the ensuing criminal case was over in 2009, the investors had been scammed out of $200 million, an AIG executive had been falsely accused of bribe paying, and Bourke had been ordered to prison. Kozeny escaped justice. A Gatsby-like figure who owned his own island, he retreated to his seaside estate in the Bahamas, where he eluded the prosecutors in two countries who called him one of the era's preeminent con artists.On its own, the story of Viktor Kozeny and Frederic Bourke, two men who were brought low by a billion dollar oil deal that ranks among the most fanciful of all time, is the stuff of a Hollywood thriller.At every turn, Kozeny and Bourke relied upon their attorneys for guidance, and at almost every turn they were led astray by flawed advice, leading to their indictments.This saga is part of a broader tale of international business corruption -- and the crackdown on such crime thanks to The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.