FBIS4-46780 "jpusr060___94023"
FBIS-USR-94-060 JPRS
FBIS Report: Central Eurasia 31 May 1994 RUSSIA ECONOMIC & SOCIAL AFFAIRS

U.S. Reports on RF Organized Crime Viewed

U.S. Reports on RF Organized Crime Viewed 944F0750A Moscow NOVAYA YEZHEDNEVNAYA GAZETA in Russian 31 May 94 pp 944F0750A Moscow NOVAYA YEZHEDNEVNAYA GAZETA Russian CSO [Article by Aleksey Novikov, under the rubric "Analysis": "Borders Are Open--So Far, Only for Mafia"] [Text] "A few years ago Moscow was advertised as a city of intellectual and cultural blossoming, compared to Paris of the 1920's and New York of the 1940's. Today it frequently seems that Moscow more resembles the Chicago of Al Capone's times... Moscow has turned into a menacing city."--THE WASHINGTON POST At a time when the president of Russia, like the beloved leader Kim Chong-il, "provides a hands-on leadership" for Russian intelligence, counterintelligence, and border guards, conducting meetings with them and mapping the milestones for future victories, it looks like our American comrades are increasingly losing faith in the ability of our "competent organs" to at least get somewhat of a handle on the criminal situation on one-seventh of the dry land. It has always been believed, and justly so, that the regular American Joe does not give a damn about anything that has no direct bearing on him personally and his country. Therefore, it is symbolic that recently articles on the subject of runaway crime in Russia appear weekly in American newspapers. It means that this problem, which has already drove us to frustration by its "urgency," is already perceived there as something almost close to home. And judging by headlines, is even treated with a shade of panic. "...American politicians are discovering that they will have to battle a threat to national security that is perhaps much more serious than the ill-fated Ames' espionage case," writes Martin Anderson in THE WASHINGTON TIMES, and goes on to warn: "A situation where the authority in the second world nuclear power of significance may end up in the hands of criminal and nationalist fanatics no longer appears inconceivable." He is echoed by an equally perplexed Steven Erlanger in THE NEW YORK TIMES: "Few could foresee that crime will be so large-scale and so well organized, so strongly linked with the weak government, and that it will create the real prospect of the emergence of a superpower run by criminals, a sort of Sicily stretching over two continents." Perhaps these are just journalistic "embellishments" for better effect? Far from so. A serious "word" in this respect has already come from the most competent people in Washington (and not only there). Appearing in April in the U.S. Senate, CIA Director James Woolsey spoke of the threat of a "criminal politburo" emerging in Russia, which will become a "strong and ingenious adversary," while a high-ranking London police official David Winess warned directly that "unless Russian organized crime groups are treated with all due vigilance, you are not going to be able to cope with this problem--so fast it exacerbates and such is its scale." As for Americans, they certainly keep up their vigilance. It is not accidental that a few days ago there was a report that the FBI intends to open its representation (or whatever it may be called) in Moscow in the nearest future, although in the past they have rejected this idea "because of budget paucity," and the CIA had been against it as well.
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Articles filed by foreign correspondents accredited in Moscow resemble reports from a country at war: the number of casualties, grisly details of crimes, nearly daily bombings, "the atmosphere of rage and cruelty in which it seems aggressiveness has become a norm"--in short, everything that for Russia means "rampant gangsterism here." And actually, Western colleagues hardly exaggerate. On 20 April, some touches to this gloomy picture were added by CIA Director James Woolsey, who spoke at the hearings in the U.S. Senate on the subject of international organized crime. Speaking of the largest in the world criminal groups, Woolsey separately identified four: Latin American drug syndicates, the Italian Mafia, Chinese "triads," and organized criminal groups in the former USSR. He said that there are approximately 5,700 criminal gangs currently operating on the territory of Russia, and another 1,000 similar formations on the territory of the former Soviet republics. "Approximately 200 of them," said the CIA director, "are large, far-flung criminal organizations, which are involved in criminal activities across the entire former Soviet Union and 29 other countries." In the opinion of the chief American chekist, the Russian mafia is currently at the stage of formalizing its organizational structure. So far there is no single center directing the entire criminal infrastructure, but it may appear in the form of the aforementioned "criminal politburo." At least underground "obkoms" [oblast committees] and "gorkoms" [city committees] are already functioning. James Woolsey states authoritatively (and we have no reason not to believe him) that "to a considerable extent the might of Russian organized crime is the result of its ties with corrupt government officials. Right now organized crime probably does not control the Russian Government, but it has tremendous influence in some of its segments." "Without any doubt, there are links between the leaders of the main criminal groups and some prominent political figures," said the CIA director. "Keeping in mind the number of companies that are under the influence or control of organized crime, it would be difficult for government bureaucrats in Russia, even high-ranking government officials, to avoid close contact with it." According to Woolsey, criminal groups in Russia spend between 30 and 50 percent of their profits on bribing "government employees with good connections, first and foremost in customs and in the militia." One can only regret that James Woolsey did not provide at least a partial list of these "figures"--as part of humanitarian aid, so to say. By doing this he could save the West billions of dollars, which arrive in Russia with fanfare in the form of credits, and then quietly flow into foreign banks.
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So how can our tattooed compatriots present a threat to world civilization? First, in the opinion of the West, the rampant crime in Russia is a direct threat to its internal stability. The same James Woolsey quite logically believes that because of activation of organized criminal formations "a considerable number of people in Russia lose faith in their government's ability to function, which revives their nostalgia for a 'strong hand' that will bring order back to the streets." "There is a real danger that a rapid growth of crime will turn people away from Yeltsin's program of reforms and throw them into the embrace of political forces, of supporters of a hard line," he says. In other words, the West is very much afraid that the Russians, driven up against the wall by gangsters, will demand the "iron fist" for a curtain call and then they, the West, will have to deal not with the compliant Boris Nikolayevich but with the unpredictable Vladimir Volfovich. The results of parliamentary elections in Russia showed that these concerns are not groundless and it is not accidental that Zhirinovskiy has made fight against crime one of the central points of his program. And presidential elections are still ahead for us.... The second point that causes great concern in the West is that organized crime in Russia threatens to weaken its control over the stockpile of tactical nuclear warheads and nuclear materials in general. "There is serious evidence," writes the American magazine ATLANTIC MONTHLY, "that organized crime in the former Soviet Union is constantly trying to find access to the nuclear stockpile for the purpose of deriving giant profits." And the former U.S. State Department official Paul Goble maintains: "I am convinced that if I had $25 million, I could buy a warhead and the codes for launching it." TIME magazine reports that many traders in Moscow offer for sale small quantities of radioactive substances, which, however, are not suitable for making a nuclear bomb. "But nobody has any doubt that a market of real nuclear materials does exist." The proof of this is last year's incident when an employee of a Moscow nuclear materials research center fled, taking with him one and a half kilograms of highly enriched uranium. True, the stolen material was soon recovered, but perhaps we simply do not know of other such cases with a less happy ending? And finally, the entire world community watches in horror cooperation processes within the framework of international organized crime. Unlike proletarians of all countries who never did get around to uniting, the gangsters implement the famous Marxist slogan quite successfully. According to CIA data, Italian and Russian mafiosi have already held two "symposiums"--in Prague and in Warsaw. In keeping with the agreements reached there, the Italians share their "expertise" in the area of acquisition and distribution of drugs, while the Russians ensure safe routes for their transportation and make a distribution network available. "Our" gangsters have already begun cooperation with the Colombian drug barons from the Cali cartel as well. As is known, the trail from a huge consignment (one tonne) of cocaine confiscated by Russian customs led to Colombia. In addition, the CIA maintains that the Russian mafia moves drugs from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Central Asian countries to Europe and North America--naturally, through the territory of Russia. As for foreign gangsters, they see our country as an excellent place for money laundering. According to Luciano Violante, who heads the Italian parliament's commission on combating the mafia, just recently Calabrian mafiosi invested 2 trillion lira in a small bank and an oil refinery in the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Which brings to mind an old journalistic joke: "Sodom and Gomorrah are sister cities!"
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In the past, our newspapers regularly published the rubric "Soviet Man Abroad." It usually featured tales of various heroic deeds by our compatriots: one rescued a foreign old lady from a fire; another resolutely rebuffed the intrigues of foreign intelligence; still others responded to a desperate SOS by Japanese fishermen. Such things did happen, of course, but mainly all of us remember what a sad sight a Soviet man actually presented abroad on an official trip or as a tourist: the intimidated penniless creature, afraid of every shadow, seeing CIA agents in every trash can, and therefore preferring to move around exclusively in groups--like baboons. There have been blessed changes in this respect, too: Former comrades with foreign travel privileges have turned into citizens without travel privileges, while corpulent herds of those who in the past most often had a lot of practice addressing others as "Comrade Warden" currently have found their grazing pastures at Champs-Elysee. The monstrous magnitude of the illegal "flight" of capital from Russia has already been written about many times, but it may still be worth reminding that at the time when our leadership kneels before the West and begs with an outstretched hand for a couple of billion, about $40 billion have flown abroad from Russia since 1992, and about $1 billion now flows there every month. According to the British company Control Risks Group, which consults Western businessmen on matters of security, most of the almost 2,000 commercial banks currently existing in Russia are used to launder money and transfer it abroad. Now another method of exporting money abroad has become fashionable: Ingenious crooks buy tickets by the hundreds for the Air Canada airline, take them to Canada by suitcase and once there, return them for hard currency as "unused." And in April, the work of Sheremetyevo customs was paralyzed for an hour: Its staff was counting the million dollars one of the passengers was taking with him to London. Therefore, as the reader may guess, our "Japs" ["Yaponchik"--nickname of a Russian mafia "kingpin" who lives in the U.S.] are not destitute in the far abroad. According to a specialist from the same Control Risks Group, "in London a considerable number of luxury items are being purchased by Russians with suitcases of cash at the price of up to $3 million per item. By comparison, what is a check in an expensive restaurant--1,000 pounds "per nose?" With satisfaction, the owner of one such establishment told a SPIEGEL [as published] correspondent: "They spend much more than Arabs." London bankers have calculated that the Russians already have deposited in British banks at high interest yield more than 3 billion pounds. They buy up homes and land lots in such aristocratic areas as Chelsey, Mayfair, and Kensington, have formed a waiting list for prestigious Jaguars, and have placed their children in the most expensive colleges and boarding schools. "They always demand the best and most expensive," says a London real estate agent. "You can recognize these gentlemen first and foremost by diamonds," says the manager of a Tiffany jewelry firm. He is upset, though, that Russian visitors themselves wear "poor quality jewelry, while buying from us expensive stones the size of a pigeon egg." Well, this is just too bad--they do not teach good taste in the zone...
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Right now--against the background of our endless references to the "civilized world" and the splendor reigning there--one may get a false impression that corruption, gangsterism, and street crime are problems of a purely Russian "vintage," unknown to Americans, Italians, or British. It is silly to argue that this is not so. As is known, only two things provide more or less secure protection from crime: either a dictatorial regime with its "iron fist," as it was under Stalin or Hitler, or a highly stable and socially-oriented economy, such as exists, for instance, in Sweden. As for most industrially developed countries in the West, which we tirelessly point to as an example for ourselves, I dare to assure you that their citizens--much as ours--bemoan day and night the rise of all varieties of crime. Italy has long become famous for its Mafia, corruption, and political terrorism. In far-from-bloodthirsty England, where capital punishment was repealed 30 years ago, now 75 percent of the population demand it be restored. The United States of America spends $90 billion annually fighting crime, and nevertheless the national loss resulting from it--with the same enviable regularity--amounts to more than $400 billion. And the statistics in this area do not depend at all on the country's operational socioeconomic model. In China, despite the preservation of political dogmatism, the development of market relations also produced a tremendous number of new stimuli for theft and corruption. In the beginning of this year XINHUA reported that more than 300,000 bribe-taking bureaucrats were "netted" in China's Anhui province alone. Nevertheless, although we cannot claim a strictly Russian monopoly of crime, the situation in our country fundamentally differs from that in the rest of the world. While the situation there is difficult, in our country it is atrocious. We have neither Chinese nor Arab cruelty, nor American money, nor--least of all--Scandinavian stability and wealth. What we have is a complete mess, demoralization, and anarchy, where gangsters and bribe-takers multiply like bacteria in a Petri dish. While "over there" a line still exists between honest people and criminals, "here" it is already so washed out that soon we will be completely unable to distinguish one from the other. Criminality has permeated the masses so much that the expression "a criminal state" no longer appears to be a journalistic exaggeration. And the saddest part is that the "masses" are not really that much at fault. Pseudo-reforms have pushed them into a corner, and the only way out often is unclean conscience. I recently happened upon an article by an American author, who naively berated his country for not aiding former Soviet republics more in the fight against crime. This is laughable for at least two reasons. First, the Russian leadership got the Americans used to the idea that the latter, like the Communists in our past, "are responsible for everything," from winter crops to suppression of crooks. Second, equally laughable per se is the assumption that crime in the CIS or just Russia can be defeated by monetary infusions into the decrepit organism of law enforcement organs--they will end up precisely in the place where infusions usually end up.... Criminal rampage in the Russian expanses is the result not only and not so much of the weakness of our militia and special services. This is precisely the case where the problem cannot be solved without dealing with the economic base. Had we not had "shock therapy," we would not have crime epidemics. Because it is widely known that under normal circumstances it is still much more profitable and comfortable to be an honest man than a bribe-taker and gangster.