FBIS4-46780
"jpusr060___94023"
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.
* * *
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.
* * *
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!"
* * *
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...
* * *
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.