#9
Jamestown Foundation Monitor
December 3, 2001
CONTRACT KILLINGS REMAIN A REGULAR OCCURRENCE IN
MOSCOW...
There has been much good news out of Russia recently, including continued economic growth and ongoing reform of both the economic and judicial spheres. Last month, for example, the State Duma passed a final version of a new Criminal Procedural Code that, among other things, will over time transfer the right to issue warrants for searches and arrests from prosecutors to the courts and institute jury trials. While aspects of the new code are controversial, few observers argue that it is not an improvement over the old one (Moscow Times, November 23; see also the Monitor, July 16, June 21). These and other trends give good grounds for saying, as a leading Western newspaper did last week, that "Russia's problems today pale beside those of five years ago"
(Financial Times, November 30).
One problem getting less attention these days than during the 1990s is crime--specifically, organized crime. This may in part be a function of the perception that Russia became increasingly stable as a result of the August 1998 financial crisis and postcrisis recovery, the retirement of Vladimir Putin's mercurial predecessor and the new president's image as a tough enforcer. Indeed, it is rather ironic that throughout the previous decade opinion polls showed crime near or at the top of the Russian public's concerns and that then President Boris Yeltsin declared at least a half a dozen anticrime campaigns, though to little avail. Putin, meanwhile, has not made it a major issue, at least publicly.
This is not, however, because the problems of crime and organized of crime have faded. Indeed, the Interior Ministry reported last month that the number of crimes of all types connected to organized crime groups increased by 83 percent over the past year and that more than 6,600 members of criminal gangs had been charged with crimes since the start of this year, up more than 35.5 percent over last (NTV.ru, November 20). In October, the Interior Ministry reported that Russia's murder rate was the world's second highest, behind that of South Africa (see the Monitor, October 3). While most murders in Russia are the result of domestic disputes or "hooliganism," assassinations carried out by organized crime groups remain a serious problem. This is clear from the crime reports of Russia's major newspapers and news agencies.
For example, around midnight on Saturday (December 1), two people were shot on a western Moscow street by gunmen who then escaped in a car. One victim died on the spot, the other was seriously wounded. Police officials, who said the shootings bore the hallmarks of a mafia-style hit, found documents on the wounded victim identifying him as an employee of the Kremlin administration and director of the Arbat Hotel, but did not rule out that the documents were fake (Radio Ekho Moskvy, December 2). The previous day (November 30) two men were shot to death outside an apartment building on Moscow's Rublevskoe Highway. Police said the victims were members of the capital's Orekhov criminal group. The killer dumped his AK-47 at the scene of the crime--standard procedure in contract killings--before fleeing (Interfax, November 30). On November 28, three gunmen in black masks entered the Gagra café in central Moscow and shot two people, killing one and wounding the other. The gunmen escaped (NTV.ru, November 28). On November 20, a businessman in the capital was seriously wounded after being shot in the back by an unidentified female. Police investigators said they suspect the shooter was a woman sought in connection with the double homicide of two Moscow businessmen on September 21. The woman is apparently responsible for other hits: Earlier this year, an arrested criminal told police he had carried out contract murders with a woman known in the criminal underworld as "Nikita" (Gazeta.ru, November 20). On November 2, Sergei Balashov, deputy prefect of Moscow's western district, was shot to death as he got out of his car near his office. The shooter--who, according to Balashov's chauffeur, used a pistol with a silencer--escaped with an accomplice. Balashov oversaw construction projects in a prestigious part of Moscow and police believe that his murder was connected with his work (Moscow Times, November 5; Kommersant, November 3; Gazeta.ru, November 2). On October 24, a car belonging to the director of a Moscow-based Internet company was destroyed by a bomb blast equal to 200 grams of TNT. Luckily for the busin essman, he was not in the car when it blew up (Polit.ru, November 24). The previous day (October 23), the sports journalist Vasily Utkin was shot in the back while walking from his apartment to his job at the editorial office of the Gazeta web newspaper (GZT.ru) in central Moscow. The shooter escaped in a waiting car. Utkin underwent surgery, but the bullet had not hit any of his vital organs. Police were quoted as saying the attacker--who was probably aiming to intimidate the journalist, not kill him--may have been either an unhappy sports fan, a member of "the sports mafia" or a gambling-debt collector (Moskovsky Komsomolets, October 24).
...AS WELL AS IN THE REGIONS.
Contract killings, of course, are not confined to Moscow, and incidents in other cities suggest that business throughout Russia remains highly criminalized. On November 28, Vladimir Zubov, head of the Pugachevsky district of Saratov Oblast, was wounded when a grenade that was fixed to the door of his home detonated (Interfax, November 28). The day before, police in Yekaterinburg found the body of the financial director of a company that provides security cameras and fire alarm equipment. The victim had been shot twice in the head (NTV.ru, November 28). On November 26, Leonid Bochkov, director of the Vostochny Port, located in the Far Eastern city of Nakhodka, was shot to death as he was leaving his office. Four men were detained in connection with the murder the next day. The Gazeta.ru website said the killing was likely connected to a battle for control over Vostochny, which is Russia's main Pacific seaport (Gazeta.ru, November 27). On November 21, Sergei Brusnitsyn, the owner of four stores in St. Petersburg, was shot to death in his apartment. One report claimed Brusnitsyn was "well known in criminal circles by the alias Klyukva" and was close to Kirill Sadchikov, head of the Virilis firm, who was shot to death by masked men on November 15 while eating in a downtown St. Petersburg restaurant (Interfax, November 21; NTV.ru, November 15). On November 19, Valery Kilosoniya, general director of the West Siberian Trading Industrial Alliance, a company involved in motor fuel and lubricants sales, was found knifed to death in the entranceway to his apartment building in Omsk. Police said that it was most likely a contract killing, noting that an attempt had been made on Kilosoniya's life three months earlier (RIA Novosti, November 19; Omskie Novosti, November 26). On November 18 the director of ATEX, a local television company in Novokuznetsk, was murdered and his bodyguard wounded in what police suspect was a contract killing (Gazeta.ru, November 19). On November 16, five people were killed and one wounded when a gunman tossed a grenade into a Tomsk cafe and then opened fire with an automatic weapon. Police said the incident was a "settling of accounts" between criminal groups and that the targets were mostly ethnic Azeri criminals from Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk and Kemerova (Polit.ru, November 16). On November 7, Nikolai Tolstykh, director of the Krasnokamenskaya coalmine in the Kuzbass region, was shot to death. Police officials said that the murder was most likely connected to his professional activities, noting that "the coal mining industry of the region is tightly linked to the criminal world" (Gazeta.ru, November 8).
In addition to business and industry, politics in some Russian regions also remains highly criminalized. According to Aleksandr Drozdov, the deputy presidential envoy to the Far Eastern federal district, fifty of the 252 registered candidates running for seats in the Primorsky Krai Duma election, scheduled for December 9, are "connected to criminal structures" (Polit.ru, November 23). Anonymous local election officials were quoted as saying that such candidates are ready to use whatever means necessary to win seats in the regional Duma. Three aides to a candidate in the city of Ussuriisk were recently severely beaten by a group of men with baseball bats. The three victims, two men and a woman, were hospitalized after being beaten, and the candidate, Nikolai Golik, said he had received anonymous threats prior to the attack on his staffers (NTV.ru, November 27).
None of this is to say that the Russian police do not score successes in battling organized crime. Last month, police in the city of Tolyatti, home to AvtoVAZ, maker of the Lada car, arrested the "core" of the so-called Volga crime group. The group had allegedly carried out some twenty contract killings, including the murders of the head of the Tolyatti police's criminal investigation unit, the head of the local Lada-TV television company, the head of the Tolyatti association of AvtoVAZ car dealers and other businessmen in the city (Vremya Novostei, November 23; see also the Monitor, August 10).
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