James Giffen

James Henry Giffen was born in 1941 in Stockton, California.^[1] He grew up to be an American businessman and an authority on American-Soviet trade.^[2] He is the founder and chairman of .^[3] He was the prime suspect accused in the $80 million Kazakhgate bribery scandal, which was at one time the largest US investigation ever into an overseas bribery case; but which went nowhere.^[4][5]

Giffen has had ties to the USSR dating back to the 1970s. After graduating from college, he worked for a subsidiary of Armco Steel, developing a relationship with Armco boss and future US commerce secretary C. William Verity, Jr.^[6] During the Cold War, Giffen was instrumental in setting up the multi-company American Trade Consortium (including large corporations such as RJR Nabisco, Chevron, Eastman Kodak, Johnson & Johnson and Archer Daniels Midland) to negotiate entry into the Soviet market with representatives of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.^[7]

Kazakhgate trial[]

In the Kazakhgate trial, Giffen asserted that he was acting with the approval of the CIA, which refused to release secret papers relating to this activities.^[8] His defense said Giffen had merely been following orders from the Kazakh government, which as a foreign state had the right to define legality according to its own views, and serving the interests of the United States.^[9]

Giffen eventually pleaded guilty to a tax misdemeanor and paid $25; the other charges, which could have carried a penalty of several decades in prison, were dropped.^[8] The case concluded in November 2010; U.S. District Judge William Pauley, who said he had been able to refer to classified documents that had not been made public in the trial, ordered neither prison time nor a fine for Giffen.^[9]

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