Russian Gangsters, Guantanamo Bay, Cocaine Running and the U.S. Government
A corporate jet owned by a principal in a trendy Meatpacking District hotel reportedly made several mysterious flights over the years to the U.S. military installation in Guantanamo Bay where terror suspects are held.
The jet was managed and offered for charter by a company owned by the hotelier’s business associate.
Yesterday, a lawyer for an ex-worker at the air-charter company said his client knew that up to 80 percent of the firm’s rentals of its fleet of planes involved “confidential, governmental flights.”
Ex-employee Mark Billey said there were “governmental people, armed people. He did recall flights to Long Beach where they did have a lot of U.S. Marshals,” according to the lawyer, Ian Friedman, who spoke to Billey in an Ohio federal prison yesterday.
Billey – who worked at the company for six months until his arrest in April – is awaiting trial on unrelated kiddie-sex charges.
The intrigue surrounding the corporate craft, a Gulfstream II, deepened last Monday, when the plane crashed in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula carrying 3.6 tons of cocaine.
The Gulfstream had been owned by Hotel Gansevoort proprietor William Achenbaum from 2001 until Aug. 30 of this year – more than three weeks before the plane crashed.
The plane was reportedly sold to Florida aircraft broker Donna Blue Aircraft, which then promptly peddled it to another man, Clyde O’Connor, for $2 million.
When Achenbaum owned the plane, it was managed by a Long Beach, Calif., company, Air Rutter International, which offered it for charter.
Air Rutter is owned by Arik Kislin of Long Island, who according to the Hotel Gansevoort’s liquor license is also a principal in the hotel.
Earlier this year, The Post reported that a Manhattan company Kislin ran in the 1990s had sponsored a U.S. visa sought by an alleged Russian mob hit man.
During the time that Kislin’s associate, Achenbaum, owned the plane, it made trips in 2003, 2004 and 2005 to the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the McClatchy Newspapers group reported.
Bill Cripe, general manager of Air Rutter International, denied the plane flew to Guantanamo during charters and that the company leased
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