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Dec 31,2006 - Jan7,2006 |
The fire within Russia’s gang warfare
Part 11 - Organized crime reaches gigantic proportions in Yeltsin territory
By Antonio Nicaso
Originally Published: 2001-06-24
More than 100,000 ‘soldiers’, organized in 8,000 groups or ‘brigades’, with a core of about 387 vory v Zakone [the elite of former-USSR mobsters]." The Russian Ministry of the Interior, in a recent report to President Boris Yeltsin, gave a picture of the current situation of organized crime.
"Out of the 8,000 brigades," it stated, "at least 421 have international connections and branches in almost all Western European countries and in the U.S., Canada, Israel and Macao." In the region of Moscow alone over 130 gangs would be operating, admitted chief of the department fighting criminal organizations Dmitry Ogorodnikov. They have money and weapons, they spread fear and they don’t scorn contacts with politicians.
"Here, over 70 percent of officers have already been corrupted," Yuri Skuratov, former attorney general of the Russian Federation, wrote in a confidential report. "Corruption and organized crime make up an unbreakable and inextricable criminal continuum. Without corruption, organized crime could not exist."
A Russian weekly newpaper, Nezavysimaja Gazeta, some years ago published on its front page a map of the families who run the most important mobs in Moscow: a score of ‘brigades’ often known by the names of the neighbourhoods in which they operate: Lyubertsy, Dolgo-prudnaya, Baumanskaya.
According to the Moscow newspaper, Moscow’s Southeast uptown is the realm of the Lyubertsy (extortion, illegal textile trades), while in the Southwest the Solntsevo specialize in robberies. In the Northeast the Mytisci deal in car theft while the Daghestan clan control drug peddling and extortion on grocery stores.
Still according to Nezavysimaja Gazeta, Tchetchenyans are the most violent and numerous ethnic group (the Russian equivalent of the Sicilian Mafia) and mostly deal in extortion, drug peddling, prostitution, and weapons, art and foreign cars smuggling. Georgians specialize in bank fraud and kidnapping; Azeres, who are very active in weapons smuggling, also control food markets, fixing prices and extorting storekeepers.
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