On 19 July, Russian-based organised crime boss Tariel Oniani (also known as Tariel Mulukhov or ‘Taro’)) was sentenced to 10 years in maximum-security prison for 2009’s kidnap in Moscow of fellow Georgian businessman ‘Johnny’ Manadze, for whose release he was demanding a $500,000 ransom. His conviction in Moscow’s Khamovnichesky District Court reflects a new and distinctly less exalted chapter in the life of one of Russia’s most powerful but also most unruly kingpins. It may be a sign of a new commitment by the state to crack down on the godfathers, but could also reflect a roundabout way for his fellow gangsters to deal with a threat to them all and the fragile underworld balance of power.
All posts in category Crime
Russian crime kingpin Tariel Oniani convicted: crackdown or conspiracy?
Posted by Mark Galeotti on July 23, 2010
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/russian-crime-kingpin-tariel-oniani-convicted-signs-of-a-crackdown/
New series at the NYU Center for Global Affairs: ‘Bad Company: conversations about the new global underworld’
Not related to Russia – at least not in this first batch of speakers – but I just wanted to mention a new series I’ll be hosting at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University, in which I’l be engaging academic experts in some aspect of modern organised crime in a discussion about their work. This semester, we’ll be looking at Burma’s Wa region drug warlords with Ko-lin Chin (Rutgers-Newark) on March 1, Eastern Europe with Kelly Hignett (Hull, UK) on March 22 and Mexico with Pablo Piccato (Columbia) on April 12. These are free public events, but you do need to register in advance – details are here.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 10, 2010
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/new-series-at-the-nyu-center-for-global-affairs-bad-company-conversations-about-the-new-global-underworld/
Mixed messages from Moscow’s 2009 crime figures
Moscow police chief Major General Vladimir Kolokoltsev managed a populist one-two punch on 20 January. While congratulating himself on a decline in overall crime rates in the city in a press conference, he also got to single out the city’s migrant population as especially criminal. Yet the hidden subtext is also the continuing problem with police corruption and criminality.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on January 21, 2010
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/mixed-messages-from-moscow%e2%80%99s-2009-crime-figures/
General Shamanov and corruption within the High Command
Just as a little cross-post, I would mention that I have just had a short commentary published on the RFE/RL website on the Shamanov case and what it may say about corruption within the High Command and the prospects for change. My downbeat conclusions are that “Whatever happens to Shamanov, the likelihood is that Russia’s dirty generals will continue to enjoy business as usual – so long as they keep a low profile.” After all, the present military reform programme represents a major bonanza for these crooks in braid, and the last thing they want to do is to see Defence Minister Serdyukov forced and able to do something serious about the numerous scams they have running.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on September 29, 2009
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/general-shamanov-and-corruption-within-the-high-command/
In the belly of the beast: what the hit on ‘Yaponchik’ says about Russian organised crime
On the evening of Tuesday 28 July, the Russian vor v zakone (‘thief within the code’) Vyacheslav Ivankov, better known as ‘Yaponchik’ or ‘Little Jap’, had just finished a working dinner at the Thai Elephant restaurant on the Khoroshevskoye Shosse in northern Moscow. Although accompanied by a bodyguard, as he came onto the street, a sniper using a Dragunov SVD sniper rifle put from one to three bullets into his stomach (reports vary), leaving him seriously injured, albeit not dead.
On one level, this might seem of little real significance. Most of Russia’s still-common assassinations and contract killings are not of innocent civilians and investigative journalists but mobsters and their clients and associates. However, there are reasons to read rather more into this hit and to see the shootings as, if not a ‘shot heard around the world’, at least one heard around the Russian underworld.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on July 31, 2009
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/in-the-belly-of-the-beast-what-the-hit-on-%e2%80%98yaponchik%e2%80%99-says-about-russian-organised-crime/
Financial crisis puts new pressure on Russian police, but means boom time for security forces
Although Putin made a great play of his commitment to law and order, the emphasis always seemed to be on order more than law. Resources were devoted more to defence and public order, but nonetheless the bonanza of oil and gas revenues did mean that spending on the police picked up, making good some of the deficits created in the 1990s, when successive budget crises left them in a disastrous state. At the same time, a trickle-down of prosperity did help control (if not really reverse) the rise in street crime, while organized crime matured, with real power in the underworld moving from ‘street mafiya’ to ‘suit mafiya’, the age of the overt gangsters known as ‘bandits’ giving way to the behind-the-scenes ‘authorities’ who blended crime, business and politics. This did not mean that organized crime disappeared, but at least it did mean an end to the more violent, indiscriminate days of the 1990s turf wars.
However, the global financial crisis is making its mark in Russia, too. (more…)
Posted by Mark Galeotti on February 7, 2009
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2009/02/07/financial-crisis-puts-new-pressure-on-russian-police-but-means-boom-time-for-security-forces/
-
Latest Books
Osprey: Essential Histories ‘Russia’s Wars in Chechnya, 1994-2009’ Coming late 2014
