(FORTUNE Magazine) – Fresh from being found not guilty of helping Imelda Marcos hide some of the $200 million she was accused -- and acquitted -- of stealing from the Philippine treasury, Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi, 55, is back in business. He plans to get into Moscow retailing by taking over an empty government industrial building and stocking it with imported Western goods like home furnishings and consumer electronics. Can Soviets afford such luxuries? ''Russians line up to buy Big Macs,'' he says confidently. He projects $50 million in sales a year. Getting any profits out is another matter, since they'll be in rubles. Khashoggi's solution: A hookup with U.S. tax fugitive Marc Rich, 56. Since 1983 Rich has been a resident of Zug, Switzerland -- where the Justice Department can't grab him -- operating as an international commodities trader. Khashoggi says Rich can help him repatriate profits by swapping them for the Soviet petrochemicals and other products that Rich handles, and which can be exported. Says Khashoggi of the Rich connection: ''He's operating legally in Switzerland. No problem.'' Problem? Rich's Swiss lawyer says no such deals have been discussed. But he adds, ''Who can preclude anything in the future?''

Not everybody has been keen to do business with Khashoggi lately, and the Marcos trial didn't help. ''People don't know if you're really going to prison, so they don't like to make long-term plans,'' he said in an interview in his 46th-floor New York City apartment that sports a private pool. But the three-month trial did yield some potential profit. Khashoggi's brother Amr, 38, admired the electronic ankle bracelet a judge ordered Khashoggi to wear to ensure he did not skip his $10 million bail. The device, which intermittently pages the wearer for what amounts to a spot room check, is gone. But the Khashoggis may invest in Hitek Community Control, the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, company that makes it. Adnan calls the bracelet ''the government's wake-up service'' and thinks it has unrecognized potential.