James H. Giffen is an American businessman and an authority on American-Soviet trade.[1] He is the founder and chairman of Mercator Corporation.[2] He was the prime accused in the $80 million Kazakhgate bribery scandal, which was at one time the largest US investigation ever into an overseas bribery case.[3]
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.[4] 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.[5]