Collin Palmer's List: Russian Organized Crime

• In September of 1990, I resigned from the agency on political grounds.

  • he made an excuse to get out of it, luckily he was not denied
• It was clear to me that the leadership of the KGB and the Soviet communist party were ruining the country.

  • at least one man realized how bad the mafia was
• It should be noted that active duty KGB officers were authorized to engage in business activities under one condition only: When their activities in private business are carried out on behalf of and under directions of the KGB.

  • not even the members of the KGB had free will, they always had to report to someone and be hidden in the dark from information
• Among the Bank’s employees there were about 200 KGB officers, including several Generals. Shortly after the aborted coup d’etat of August 1991, Konanykhine employed General Leonid Shebarshin, former KGB Chairman and the right-hand man of Vladimir Kryutchkov, leader of the aborted coup d’etat. Konanykhine would later claim that he hired the KGB men for protection. With respect at least to General Shebarshin this explanation is deceptive.

  • members and officers even use each other for personal gain
• In September of 1992, Konanykhine entered the United States. He claims he had narrowly escaped a KGB attempt to kidnap him in Budapest, Hungary. The circumstances of this story, however, show that it was a mock kidnapping, if any kidnapping at all. It looks much more as an attempt of accomplices of the theft to split the profits "nicely."

  • deception and lies are always used to protect the leaders
• Money laundering and organized crime in Russia have reached proportions unprecedented in human history. To a large extend it was made possible because large segment of the Russian bureaucracy reaching the top of the government has become the most dangerous part of organized crime. It is useless to appeal to Yeltsin’s regime to solve the problem. The issue of what to do with the Russian kleptocracy has become an international problem.

  • organized crime in Russia has spread to the rest of the world
• Institutionalized crime ruins Russia. It represents a serious threat to the whole world given Russia’s vast territory and huge arsenals of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear power plants. In the present situation, to continue financial assistance to Russia means to further enrich and pervert corrupt Russian elite.

  • organized crime must be stopped, if not it could lead to disastirous occurences
• Any future financial assistance to Russia should be redirected from the Russian government to the grass-root level, where it can reach Russian people, and it should be done under strict international control.

  • russia needs some help from international sources to protect it's citizens
• Today, some analysts say that at least a generation is needed to return Russia back on track. I do not think so. Russian is not lost yet. Well-designed and diligently implemented American policy on Russian money laundering and corruption issues may make a big difference for Russian people.

  • this man states that america's help would work

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• who wants clarification over reports in Spain regarding his alleged links with the mob.
• the owner of the aluminum company “Rusal” is suspected of laundering four million euros in Spain in the early 2000s through bank accounts belonging to the Russian mafia.

  • these leaders are threatened by crime lords and forced to act in ways that benefit the mob, they create fear in people with a lot of money and power

  • big businessman are normally the ones who are corrupted by crime groups

• The law rises the minimal term to a member of a criminal group who committed a serious crime from 7 to 12 years, and the maximum, from 15 to 20 years. The leaders and coordinators of the netherworld can be sent to jail for life. The criminal liability of corrupted officials, members of criminal groups, has also been toughened. The minimal prison term for them has been raised from 10 to 15 years. Membership in a criminal group is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.

  • russian law is trying to create harsher punishments
• equires that membership in a criminal organisation must be a crime. In other words, connection to criminal activity can be a sufficient reason to send a man (or a woman) behind bars for long - sometimes forever - even if the fact of concrete, identifiable crime committed by this person has not been proven.

  • organized crime will not be tolerated
• the measures to toughen the criminal law target the leaders of organised crime.’ ‘The expression ‘a thief-in-law’ will soon disappear from the vocabulary of our citizens,’ he said, ‘a thief must be in prison.’

  • punishments are tough

• the bill is a powerful weapon in the hands of the law enforcement agencies. Perhaps, too powerful.

   

   

  • now the government with the laws might become corrupt

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• It’s not surprise that Russian organized crime have the same main features as European organized crime:

  • it relates to other types of orgainzed crime
• It’s a very  profitable business because of mostly uncontrolled arms storage in the  Russian Army and the war in Chechnya

  • different factors contribute to why organized crime is done
• Russia is  multinational country, so we have huge number of ethnic mafia-groups. The  reasons are very simple and we can compare them with conditions in Sicile,  when mafia has been organized as partisan response to pressure of  invaders.

  • different groups of people form different mafia branches
• Experienced officers have left law enforcement services for last 15 years  because of small salary, as a result these services lost many specialists,  on other hand

  • former officers sell their skills because of low pay, this in turn makes the mafia very dangerous because they possess professionals
• Former officers sell not only  their skills but their connections inside Police and secret services.
• And now they can influence on manpower  policy of law enforcement services.

  • the red mafia is also the richest people in the country
• Yes, there were many facts of corruption in the time of RUOP,

  • corruption and greed ruined any chance for the RUOP to diminish organized crime
• Hiring officers from ethnic minority backgrounds is a crucial asset in countering ethnic organized crime.

  • these officers are unfamiliar to the processes of russians and are less likely to be intimidated

• During last 15 years experienced officers had to leave FSB, as result FSB loose many specialists, on other side - corruption is growing up. Former FSB officers sell not only their skills, but their connections inside FSB. 

   

  So, now FSB has stopped fight against organized crime because this service found new target, more politically important - oligarchs. But unlike MVD, FSB forgot about self-defense, so now it’s a very attractive and undefended target for corruption and organized crime.

  • another example of a failed group to combat organized crime
• Our law enforcement services still can’t resolve this problem. There are not ethnic divisions not in FSB not in MVD. And I don’t think they will be able to solve this problem in near future. It’s a question of trust to ethnic minority. And today the level of xenophobia inside secret services is very high.

  • law enforcement doesn't use their full opportunities
• we had 3 law enforcement services which were responsible for fight against organized crime.

  • at least they tried to combat it

• One service - tax police - was destroyed in result of turf wars between secret services.

   

  Another - Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) - choose passive position. They are worried more about self-defense than approach to the organized crime. After last MVD reform we lost special service responsible only for fight against Organized crime - like Italian DIA - Direzione investigativa antimafia.

   

  And the third - Federal Security Service (FSB) - has preferred the war against oligarchs and participation in political life to fight against mafia.

   

  And we have not coordination center between law enforcement agencies you’re your Consiglio generale per la lotta alla criminalità organizzata.

   

  We need reforms in law enforcement services, but today in modern political situation all plans of reforms are designed by secret services and of President’s Administration  without public discussion.  We lost our abilities of civilian control.

   

  Now we hopelessly lose our fight against the organized crime. And I fear in this political situation we have very few chances to change this situation in near future.

  • there are 3 new ways to combat organized crime, but none of these groups are totally focused on organized crime. Power has been lost by civilians and organized crime looks inevitable in the future for Russia according to this journalist.

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• Many Russian citizens even fear going to the cops for fear of extortion or violence.

  • russian citizens cannot act freely with the presence of the mafia
• During the past decade, the Russian mob has intruded into the nascent free market, privatization, disarmament, military conversion, foreign humanitarian relief, financial aid, and even state reserves of currency and gold.

  • the mob is involved in numerous facets of crime
• In the "Second Great Gold Rush," foreign businessmen, including Americans, arrived in the former Soviet Union to cash in on Russia's wobbly transition from a communist to a free market/capitalist society

  • russia was taken advantage of at a time of vulnerability

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• In Russia today, organized gangs of criminals are gunning down reform candidates, honest officeholders and political journalists. The country is out of the government's control, and nowhere is political crime more violent than in St. Petersburg, heart of Russia's democratic reform.

  • the mafia controls russian from the government outward
• How can we help the embattled reformers in Russia? Certainly not by pouring more monetary aid down its banking system's drain. In Washington this week, Vladimir Gusinsky, a media baron supporting democrats in next year's Duma elections, denied that Russia's nouveau riche spirited some $66 billion out of the country in the past four years. But not even an oligarch thinks an infusion of Western money would fix the anarchy in which assassins thrive.

  • not even US help could help Russia
• Without condescension, we should offer to share with the Russians our experience in combating organized crime. Our federal agents and big-city cops know how mafias corrupt officials, and are wise to the latest computer techniques in moving hot money to foreign fronts. Some even remember how to induce rival gangs to ``go to the mattresses'' and destroy each other.

  • the US has experience dealing with organized crime

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• He had reliable information that a major figure in Russian organized crime had taken out a contract on my life.

  • the mafia chooses who they want to die, it's scary
• After New York, it is known to have the largest concentration of Russian mobsters in the United States, and a hit man could easily trace me to my South Beach hotel. For that matter, the agent said, forget about doing any more interviews in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, ground zero for the Russian mob in America. In fact, he advised, just forget about doing any more reporting on the Russian mob at all.

  • the person had to change their lifestyle just because of a threat
• lmost all of these sources marvel at the Russian mob's ability to blend financial wizardry and bone-crunching muscle. This dangerous combination, they claim, makes Russian organized crime more dangerous and much harder to stop than virtually any other syndicate.

  • the ability of the russian mob to do these things makes them special and especially dangerous
• FBI officials have stated that in North America alone there are 30 Russian crime syndicates in more than 17 cities, trafficking in everything from narcotics to prostitutes.

  • there is a presence in North America
• ``Journalists pursuing investigative stories on corruption and organized crime have found themselves at great risk, especially in Russia and the Ukraine, where beatings have become routine,'' stated a 1997 report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York. The committee claims that 13 reporters from the Russian Federation have been killed by the mob since the fall of communism.

  • writing and publising information on organized crime is especially difficult in Russia
• ``There is a deep distrust on the American side of the integrity of Russian law enforcement,'' said James Finckenauer, a Rutgers criminologist who received a grant from the Justice Department to study Russian organized crime. Some Russian authorities want to sell the information they have, Finckenauer said, noting that ``these are badly underpaid people.''

  • america and russia cannot cooperate to stop it because there is a mistrust between the governments

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• An alleged fix at Salt Lake is the latest link between organized crime and Russian athletes 

   The reaction of IOC chief Dr. Jacques Rogge, who described himself as "shocked" at last week's news that an alleged Russian mobster, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, 53, had been arrested in Italy for conspiring to fix both the pairs and the ice dancing results in the Salt Lake City Games,

  • even in sports the mob is present
• Anyone with even a cursory sense of sports in Russia knows that organized crime has spread its tentacles around the highest levels of sport, insinuating itself into the lives--and deaths--of numerous high-income, high-profile athletes and officials.

  • the mob is involved in many ways in sports
• Mob ties have been alleged or suspected in connection with the deaths of several sports figures who, apparently, were not cooperating. To name just a few, the president of the Russian Hockey Federation, Valentin Sych, was murdered gangland style in April 1997 in Russia; later that year the director general of Spartak Moscow's soccer club, Larissa Nechayeva, was assassinated at her home near Moscow; and last December figure skater Kira Ivanova, a 1984 bronze medalist, was mysteriously murdered in her Moscow apartment.

  • if you don't cooperate, the mob will get you, they have so much power
• As Kournikova sensibly responded when asked about her relationship with Tokhtakhounov last week in San Diego, "I don't think I should be talking about this. I'm Russian. I have to go back there." --E.M. Swift

  • even athletes that are liked are scared

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• The term “Russian organized crime” (ROC) refers to criminal groups from the 15 republics which comprised the former Soviet Union. ROC has existed for 20 years in the United States but during the last five years law enforcement authorities have observed a distinct increase in their criminal activities

  • it's growing in the united states
• ROC groups are involved in murder, money laundering, extortion, auto theft, weapons smuggling, narcotics trafficking, prostitution, counterfeiting currency, and a multitude of complex fraud schemes.

  • they're involved in a myriad of activities
• ROC in the United States evolved in Brighton Beach, New York, which at one time was a small Russian immigrant community

  • big things can start from small places...
• After the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991, many Russian criminals and organized crime figures fled to the United States. By 1992, Russian authorities had alerted U.S. law enforcement officials of the arrival in New York of Vyatcheslav Ivankov, identified as a leader of the "Thieves in Law," which is a traditional-style organized crime group that predated communism in 1917. The “Thieves in Law” obeys a code of conduct much like the traditional LCN. This group existed throughout the Soviet era and is a formidable threat there today.

  • the "Thieves in Law" were a very large group that came from Russia to the United States, along with it's leader
• The professional groups generally have an established allegiance to a leader and follow a criminal code.

  • these are the most dangerous
• Frauds are the core of these groups’ criminal activities and involve the theft and use of stolen credit cards, insurance schemes involving staged auto accidents and/or false billings for medical treatment, theft of excise taxes in the fuel industry, theft of telecommunications signals (used to clone cellular telephones), and immigration fraud.

  • it's all about deception and doing things under the radar

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• In the summer of 1994, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) estimated that 25% of the Russian gross national income was derived from organized criminal activities.

  • the leaders of the organized crime have a large effect on the economy and the government
• Organized crime has become the most important political problem in Russia. It threatens to damage the unstable political, economic, and social systems by means of corruption and violence. It has created a situation where there is no guarantee of the Russian citizen's personal safety.

  • russia is not a safe place to live or do business sometimes because of organized crime and corruption
• There are three main levels of organized crime: group, organization and association;

  • three types...they all act in different ways too
• Without delay, laws should be adopted to fight organized crime in the areas of corruption, illicit criminal incomes, and laundering of capital/money, the criminal distortion of privatization, and others.

  • laws are necessary
• As of September 1995, President Yeltsin's Decree, "On The Urgent Measures to Defend The Population Against Gangsterism and Other Kinds of Organized Crime," is still the law in the Russian Federation. However, because of the continued deterioration of Russia's social and economic infrastructures, the Decree unfortunately has not produced the desired effects in combating organized crime that its proponents had optimistically predicted.

  • russia's problems within national affairs have restricted their fight against organized crime and the lords that lead these organizations

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