Russia as a Virtual Mafia State - Essay Example

 The Russian mafia, also widely referred to as the Bratva, is the name used to refer to a collection of several organized crime groups/ elements originating from the former Soviet Union, currently Russia (Brown, 56). It is active in many parts of Eastern Europe and throughout Russia (predominantly Moscow). The Russian mafia is also active in the United States particularly in Brighton Beach and other nations of the world including Canada, Spain, Portugal, France, Hungary and many more. Composed largely of Russians, the Russian mafia boasts a massive membership. It is estimated that outside the ex-USSR, the crime organization has around 300,000 members while in Russia, it claims a staggering 3,000,000 in membership. Although the Russian mafia is not a singular criminal organization, most of the member groups share similar objectives, goals and organizational structures typical of the Russian mafia that determines and defines them as part of the larger Russian mafia. The criminal activities of the Russian mafia range from racketeering, drug trafficking, entrysim, extortion, loan sharking, murder, human trafficking, construction management, money laundering, robbery, bootlegging, arms trafficking, gambling, bribery, fencing and prostitution. In addition, the group also takes part in theft, skimming, pornography and fraud (Brown, 60). There are several other crime mobs allied to the Russian mafia. A few of these include such groups as the American, Israeli, Chinese Mafia, Italian, Corsican, ‘Ndrangheta and Camora. In as much as it was not until the Soviet era that the vory v zakone/ thieves-in-law surfaced as the leader of the prison groups in Gulags particularly in Soviet prison labor camps and their honor code became more defined, organized crime in Russia actually began during the imperial period of tsars. One of the more fuelling causes of escalation and growth of the mafia was the rise of the black market. This was after World War II following the death of Joseph Stalin and the fall of the Soviet Union. More gangs emerged in this flourishing drug market, enhanced by their ability to exploit the unstable governments of the former Republics. There were even times when gangs controlled a significant two-thirds of the Russian economy. The criminals that made up these different groups of the mafia were said to be either former prison members, people with ethnic ties, people from the same region with shared criminal experiences, and corrupt business leaders and communist officials. Although the existence of such member gangs has largely remained debatable and a matter of speculation, it is said that currently, there are as many as 6,000 different member groups with at least 200 of these with a global outreach (Finckenauer, 25). While Russian officials appear quick to dismiss the idea/ notion of former Russians terrorizing people around, many such as Akin Bauer, a French criminologist, think otherwise. In August 2010, he is reported to observe that the Russian mafia is one of the best criminal organizations in Europe with quasi-military operations. This was after Timur Lakhonin, the head of the Russian National Central Bureau of Interpol claimed in 2009 that although there was certainly crime involving former Russian compatriots abroad, there was no tangible information suggesting the existence of organized structures of criminal groups made up of former Russian abroad (Carlo, 78). History of the Russian Mafia, Current Status and Activities As earlier stated, the Russian Mafia’s origins can be traced back to Russia’s imperial period which began in the 1700s. The original activities were predominantly banditry and thievery. At the time, most of the population wallowed in adverse poverty as most of the people were peasants. The criminals who stole from government entities and the rich were considered heroes and gained Robin-hood status because they would divide their plunder among the poor. As a result, groups such as the Vorovskoy Mir (Thieves’ World) surfaced and developed a code of conduct characterized with strict loyalty for one another and vehement opposition against the government. The Thieves’ World was alive and very active by the time the Bolshevik Revolution (October Revolution/ Great October/ Socialist Revolution/ Red October/ October Uprising) (that saw to the seizure of state power) came around. After being robbed by highway thugs and an attempted rape during the same event, Vladimir Lenin resolved to annihilate them totally. But in the end, he failed to accomplish this task and the criminals survived on to Joseph Stalin’s rule (Carlo, 522). During Stalin’s reign, crackdown on the criminals was stepped up with millions of them rounded up and sent to gulags which were the Soviet labor camps. In the camps, powerful criminals manipulated their way up and became the vory v zakone, commonly referred to as the thieves-in-law. The vory v zakone and such affiliated groups would be recognized by their complicated tattoos that signaled membership. These tattoo identifications are still used today by Russian mobsters and criminal organizations. During the World War II, after Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin needed more men to fight for the nation. He therefore offered prisoners the chance to gain their freedom after war if they joined the war and helped them fight. Many prisoners volunteered to take up arms in their quest for freedom. However, this move was a direct violation of the rules of the Thieves’ World that members must not co-operate with the government. After the war, Stalin reneged on his promise to release the prisoners but instead sent them back to prison. Those who had refused to join the government in fighting the war referred to the traitors as suka (a term meaning the same as ‘bitch’). The inmates who had been re-jailed after collaborating with the government landed at the bottom of the vory v zakone hierarchy. Outcast, the suka moved away from the mainstream and ‘loyal’ group and started their own groups and power bases. They were hugely aided in their endeavors by choosing to collaborate with the prison officials, eventually gaining the comfort of luxurious positions. However, animosity between the two splinter groups generated into a series of Bitch Wars that occurred in the period between 1945 to 1953. Although these prison wars resulted in the daily deaths of several inmates, prison officials did nothing to stem it. In fact, they appeared to be encouraging the violence as they regarded it an effective and quiet means of cleansing the prisons of irredeemable and damaged criminals (Finckenauer, 52). Approximately eight million prisoners were released from prison following Stalin’s death and the end of his reign. These were the ones who had survived the imprisonment years and the Bitch Wars that had plagued the prisons. They became a new kind of criminals, effectively abandoning the former laws of the old Thieves’ World and conveniently adopting an “every-man-for-himself” attitude which meant that they would occasionally cooperate with the government if they were pressed to do so for survival. This criminal underworld continued to thrive in time more especially during the Brezhnev era as corruption spread throughout the Soviet government. The nomenklatura, which was the usually corrupt power elite of the country, ran the country along with criminal bosses. With the government’s deliberate ignorance of such gangs, small illegal businesses emerged throughout the country in the period around 1970s and the black economy grew. In the 1980s these businesses were allowed legal status when Mikhail Gorbachev loosed up restrictions on private ventures. By the time, the Soviet Union was facing a collapse. It is during this time (the 1970s and the 1980s) that the United States made changes to its immigration policy which consequently saw to a considerable number of Soviet Jews and other criminals moving into the United States. Most of these immigrants settled in a southern Brooklyn area called the Brighton Beach (sometimes referred to as the Little Odessa). It is in this area that Russian organized crime began in the United States with the earliest documented case occurring in the mid-1970s. It so happened that a clique of Russian conmen in guise of being merchants lied to customers that they were selling antique gold rubbles for a considerably lowered price while in truth they sold them bags of potatoes in thousands in the stead (Vaksberg, 867). By the year 1983, the Russian organized crime group in Brighton Beach had become well structured with a head – Evsei Agron. However Evsei Agron was constantly targeted by other gangs and mob groups including the rival group led by Boris Goldberg. As a result, in May 1985 Agron was assassinated. Agron was said to have been succeeded by Marat Balagula who took up Agron’s former bodyguard Boris ‘Biba’ Nayfield. Balagula was later convicted in a fraud scheme involving Merrill Lynch customers. He therefore fled the country to avoid arrest but was later discovered in 1989 in West Germany’s city of Frankfurt. He was extradited back to the United States where he was sentenced to eight years in prison. In 1992, Balagula was again convicted on a 360,000 USD credit card fraud. As a result, Nayfield took over the leadership mantle from Balagula together with “Polish Al Capone” Ricardo Fanchiniin. They set up a heroin business disguised as an import-export venture. However, Nayfield’s former friend Monya Elson returned to the United States after serving a six-year prison term in Israel and began a rival heroin trade. The ensuing competition and rivalry with Nayfield’s group hence culminated in a series of bloody mafia turf wars. The fall of the USSR saw to the rise of a free market economy. As a consequence, organized criminal gangs slowly took over control of the Russian economy. Shortly before the Soviet’s dissolution, these groups would conduct meetings in discrete locations such as hotels and restaurants so that the top brass of the vory v zakone could decide on power allocations and agree on a framework to take over the post-communist state. These crime groups grew even more in power and statue as several ex-KGB soldiers and veterans of the Afghan war began developing interest in their dealings and thus offered their skills to the crime bosses. They now had capital and military capabilities. It was during these rendezvous that an agreement was reached to send Vyacheslav “Yaponchik” Ivankov to Brighton Beach as he was killing so many people in Russia. He was also sent there in order that he would bring to control the mafia’s affairs in North America. In America too, those who dared oppose him met the same fate as his previous enemies in Russia – he killed them. Within a year of being posted in North America, Ivankov had built an international operation whose dealings included amongst others narcotics, money laundering, and prostitution. He made allies of the American mafia and the Colombian drug cartels. With time he had successfully extended the organization’s operations to Miami, Los Angeles and Boston (Vaksberg, 721). After the fall of Balagula from power, an empty void was left America’s next vory v zakone. Monya Elson (the leader of Monya’s Brigada which operated from Russia to Los Angeles to New York) and Nayfield were embroiled in a feud that was perceived to be a supremacy battle and a game of thrones for the leadership of the mafia’s affairs in the region. Countless bodies were dropped on either side. However, the arrival of Ivankov quelled tensions and the quarrel between the two factions ceased with immediate effect. With time, Monya Elson being the more ambitious of the two bosses would later challenge Ivankov’s authority and it is claimed with some certainty that he was responsible for the numerous attempts that were made on Ivankov’s life (Finckenauer and Elin, 87). During his stint as crime, boss Ivankov regularly travelled across Europe and Asia to maintain relations with other crime bosses like members of the Solntsevskaya Bratva, while also developing new ties with other mobsters. However, despite his friendly attempts to reach out to other organizations like his, many others tried still to deny him growing power and influence. For example, there was a time when Ivankov wanted to buy out Georgian boss Valeri “Globus” Glugech’s drug importation business but the latter chose to decline the offer. Ivankov had him murdered and was later rewarded what was left of Valeri’s business following the resolutions of a summit held in May 1994. Two months later, Ivankov was involved in another dispute, this time with drug lord and leader of the Orekhovskaya gang, Segei ‘Sylvester’ Timofeyev. This wrangle saw to the assassination of Segei a month later. Crime boss Semion Mogilevich, back in Europe, in May 1995 summoned a summit meeting of Russian mafia bosses in his restaurant (U Holubu) in Andel (a neighborhood in Prague). The meeting had been intervened to celebrate the birthday of Victor Averin (second in-charge of the Solntsevskaya) but Major Thomas Machacek of the Czech police got information that the Solntsevskaya had put in place motion to have Mogilevich killed following a reported dispute over 5 million USD between Mogilevich and Solntsevskaya leader Sergei Mikhailov. As a result the police had the function raided and in the process made over 200 guest arrests. However no charges were made against them but major Russian mafia members were deported and effectively banned from the country. Most of them relocated to Hungary (Finckenauer and Elin, 345). Conspicuously and even suspiciously missing from the restaurant when the police raided it was Mogilevich himself. However, he later explained his absence to other mob members and said that he was just arriving at the time the police had entered the restaurant and so he stayed away and watched from a distance till morning hours then vanished. In October 1996 in Switzerland, Mikhailov was arrested on a multitude of charges including that he was leader of a powerful Russian mafia group. He would later go on to be released two years after his arrest due to insufficient evidence to prove his guilt (Serio, 712). Nayfield was arrested in January 1994 but was later released in 1998. Elson was also arrested (but in Italy) in 1995. When a 3.5 million USD extortion attempt by two Russian businessmen Alexander Volkov and Vladimir Voloshin went wrong, the FBI arrested Ivankov and was sentenced to a ten-year maximum security prison sentence. This effectively marked the end of his reign in June of 1995. The global extent of the Russian mafia was not evident until in January 1997 when Ludwig ‘Tarzan’ Fainberg mainly due to his activities in global arms dealing. Fainberg had become popular amongst crime mobs and their bosses majorly because of his strip club called the Porky’s in Miami which provided a suitable hangout for underworld criminals. This was after he had moved from Brighton Beach to Miami in 1990. He would act as a go-between for different crime bosses and later grew particularly close to Colombian cocaine dealer, Juan Almeida. He saw this relationship with Almeida as an opportunity to grow his cocaine business by acting as an intermediary Almeida and the corrupt Russian military. In 1993, Fainberg helped Almeida get six Russian military helicopters that would assist him in his underworld business then in 1994 again, Fainberg assisted in the purchase of a submarine for similar purposes of transporting drugs. However, at the time, they had done much to warrant suspicion and to expose themselves and the authorities had started secretly investigating them. An undercover agent was posted in their midst, a one Alexander Yasevich, who was an associate of the Russian military contact and secretly a DEA agent (Serio, 644). As a result, Fainberg was arrested in 1997 while in Miami and to avoid a maximum life sentence that was staring him in the eye; he opted to testify against his friend Almeida. In return he was sentenced to a shorter 33 months of imprisonment (Rawlinson, 534). The arrival of the 21st century saw to the emergence of new mafia leaders and the release from prisons of the one that had been jailed previously. Some of the leaders that were released in 2004 included Marat Balagula, Pachovich Sloat and Vyacheslav Ivankov. Ivankov, however was extradited to Russia where he was again jailed for the deaths of two Turks that occurred in 1992 at a Moscow restaurant. He was cleared of all these charges and finally released in the year 2005. In 2009, Ivankov was killed by a sniper bullet to his stomach. During the same period too, other notorious crime bosses, Monya Elson and Leonid Roytman were arrested in 2006 and accused of organizing a plan to murder a couple of Kiev-based businessmen. Monya Elson had back in 1998 self-proclaimed himself as the most powerful mobster in the world (Haglunds, Finckenauer, and Waring, 600). FBI agents in Moscow in 2009 shifted their sights on two suspected crime bosses, Yevgeny Dvoskin and Konstantin “Gizya” Ginzburg. Dvonskin had been in jail with Ivankov in 1995 and had been deported back to Russia in 2001 for contravening immigration protocol. Konstantin on the other hand, was largely rumored to be the current boss in America after Ivankovic handed over the reins to him. Maxim Sheaib, otherwise known in the underworld as the Prince/ diplomat/ negotiator, was an influential figure in the crime world in the period around 2009. He would link businesses, groups and ventures. He had an almost ubiquitous presence in Thailand during and after the Viktor Bout arrest. It is alleged that it was the prince who usually arranged meetings and dealings between Bout and his counterparts in Malaysia. His last spotting was in 2012 in Singapore and Malaysia where he was supposedly meeting with former members of the Triad and the Sa Lah Kau gang. His origins are not clear up to date as he had strong ties and relationships with a plethora of different ethnic groups in different regions of the world (Haglunds, Finckenauer, and Elin, 551). Some information tends to suggest that Sheaib was present in Eastern Europe at the time of Ivankov’a assassination as well as that of Aslan Usoyan. He is however known to have a generally strong presence in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Previously, he had been linked with the arrest involving Viktor Bout. He was also responsible for the relationship between Aslan Usoyan and Tariel Oniani. For his participation in a 150 million dollar fraud scheme swindling the stock investors of his company YMB Magnex International, Semion Mogilevich was liste alongside the FBI’s ten most wanted fugitives. He was indicted in 2003. He was later arrested in 2008 in Russia, again for tax fraud charges, but due to the absence of an extradition treaty between the United States and Russia, he was released on bail (Rawlinson, 366). Russian groups continued to grow in influence and power and totally dominated some regions of the world. Former director of the federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Louis Freeh, once claimed that the Russian mafia by far posed the greatest threat to the United States national security in the 1990s. Alec Simchuck and his gang would rip off innocent tourists and businessmen in South Florida causing Rick Brodsky of the FBI to declare Eurasian crime their number one priority. In Atlanta, where the Russian mafia has a small hold, Russian mobs identify themselves by a spade with a 3 under it tattooed on their body. In 2010, Russian mobs were reported to have infiltrated regions in the French Riviera and Spain and grown strong (Granville, 450). The Jewish section of the Russian mafia has been a thorn in the flesh of the Israeli forces over decades as their numbers continue to increase in the nation. This escalation is partly due to the insufficient or no attention at all given to this concerning growth by the Israeli government which has rather had its attention fixed on the Palestinian problem whilst forgetting this threatening internal rot. In addition, the Russian Jewish mafia have co-operated with the Israeli Mafiosi, making them even more formidable (Granville, 453). General Structure of the Russian mafia The Russian mafia gangs are well-structured with positions designated for various purposes. The godfather/ boss/ krestnii otets is the head who controls everything. Two spies (sovietnik and obshchak) supervise the work of the brigadiers to ensure they remain loyal and that none of them become too powerful and overly ambitious. The brigadier itself is a position for he who is like captain in charge of a small group (Bratva) of men made up of about 5-6 men, he gives out assignments to Boyeviks/ warriors and reports to the Parkhan (Varese, 377). The Boyevik, similar to soldiers in Italian American Mafia crime families and Sicilian mafia, are the main strike force of the bratva. They are given special criminal activity to run and in addition are in charge of recruiting new people into the gang. They report to the brigadier. The Kryshas are known for their extreme violence and cunning serving to protect a business from outsiders. The torpedos are contract killers while the byki are bodyguards (Varese, 411). A shestyorka is an associate/ the sixth/ errand boy usually a young boy approximately 24 years old who ranks lowest in the mob. It is more of a temporary position providing ground intel on incoming operations. In the Russian mafia, to be considered a made-man and take up the honorary name ‘vor’, one must exhibit significant leadership skills, personal ability, intellect and charisma. It is the Pakhan or any other high ranking member of the mafia that determines whether one is worthy of being called a vor. The groups that make up the Russian mafia tend to have different structures of operations but efforts have since been made to restructure all groups into a special model that is unique to the Russian mafia. This model is based on the old style of Soviet criminal enterprises composed of several groups. These include the elite group led by a Parkhan which is in charge of management, organization and ideology. This is the highest group in the mafia hierarchy. The security group in charge of security and intelligence is led by one of the spies. It functions to keep peace with other criminal organizations and pay off people. The support group led by another spy watches over the working unit, collecting the money while keeping an eye on their activities. This unit is equal in power with the security group and function to plan an operation and selecting the personnel who will carry out the activities of the operation. The working unit is the lowest of all the groups working with only the support group. It conducts burglaries, theft, extortion, prostitution, street gangs, extortion and such crimes (Varese, 418). Russian criminal gangs are generally composed of individual criminal groups and ethnic criminal groups. Ethnic criminal gangs are known to co-operate with each other unrestrained by ethnic origins. They include the Russian criminal groups (comprising both Slavic and Jewish criminals) such as the Solntsevskaya Bratva, the Chechen criminal groups (such as the Chechen mafia), the Armenian criminal groups such as the Armenian power in Los Angeles (comprises mostly Armenians), Georgian criminal groups (mainly composed of the ethnic Georgian Kutaisi region, the Svaneti, the Mingrelian community and the Georgia based Yazidi community such as the Aslan Usoyan) which are active throughout the former Soviet Union and Western Europe, and the Azerbaijani criminal groups which handle a large section of the illegal drug market as well as arms trafficking and kidnapping (Granville, 250). One of the most notorious individual groups is the largest Russian criminal group based in Moscow called the Solntsevskaya Bratva. Named after the Solntsevo distric, it is led by Sergei Mikhailov with approximately 5,000 members. Other such notable individual groups include The Brother’s Circle, The Odessa Mafia (headquartered in Brighton Beach), the Grekov gang, the Dolgoprudninskaya gang, the Izmaylovskaya gang, the Orekhovskaya gang, the Semion Mogilevich organization based in Budapest, Hungary, the Uralmash gang of Yekaterinburg, the Armenian power and so on. The WikiLeaks cables report Russia as a virtual mafia state. As of 2009, Russian mafia groups are reported to have reached over 50 countries worldwide. At 2010, membership is reported to be as high as 300,000 (Varese, 98). Works Cited Brown, Archie. Contemporary Russian politics: a reader. Oaxford: Oxford University Press, 2001: 56, 60. Print. Carlo, Philip. Gaspipe: confessions of a Mafia boss. New York: William Morrow, 2008:78, 522. Print. Finckenauer, James O., and Elin J. Waring. Russian mafia in America: immigration, culture, and crime. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998: 87, 345. Print. Finckenauer, James O.. "The Russian “mafia”." society 41.5 (2004): 24-32, 61-64. Print. Granville, Johanna . "Crime That Pays: The Global Spread of the Russian Mafia." Australian Journal of Politics & History 49.3 (2003): 200-345, 446-453. Print. Haglunds, Magnus, James O. Finckenauer, and Elin J. Waring. "Russian Mafia in America: Immigration, Culture and Crime." Contemporary Sociology 29.3 (2000): 551, 600. Print. Rawlinson, Patricia. "Mafia, Media and Myth: Representations of Russian Organised Crime." The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 37.4 (1998): 346-358, 534. Print. Serio, Joseph. Investigating the Russian mafia: an introduction for students, law enforcement, and international business. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2008: 644, 712. Print. Vaksberg, Arkadiĭ. The Soviet Mafia. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991: 721, 867. Print. Varese, Federico. The Russian mafia: private protection in a new market economy. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2001: 98, 377, 418, 411. Print. Read More