Russia: “Little Japanese” Shot by Sniper

Vyacheslav Ivankov, who has been named by the United States as a senior Russian mobster, was shot in the stomach as he left a Thai restaurant on Tuesday after apparently mediating between two rival criminal groups, Russian news agencies said.

Police said that Ivankov, also known as Yaponchik (“the little Japanese”), was shot with a sniper rifle from about 70 meters away. The rifle was found abandoned in a vehicle parked nearby. The Moscow Times wondered why the shooter failed to kill the target:

It was unclear, however, why the gunman did not manage to kill Ivankov. Media reports suggested that while the crime was professionally prepared, it was executed with a high degree of blundering.

The purported killer hid in a GAZelle minivan parked on a roadside about 70 meters from the restaurant, the Investigative Committee said in a statement. Photos published on Life.ru showed the truck with a blue canvas cover, which had a small rectangular hole cut out at the top left corner.

While the killer managed to flee, the minivan was abandoned, leaving investigators not just the gun — a scoped Degtyarev sniper rifle — but also fingerprints, camouflage trousers and a jacket, news agency Rosbalt reported, citing a law enforcement source.

Detectives are also examining bullet fragments and footage from a video camera installed at the restaurant’s entrance, the Investigative Committee said. “Investigators are convinced that this was the work of a professional who could not complete his task because Ivankov stooped down when the shot was fired,” the statement said.

[Viktoria] Tsyplenkova [spokeswoman for the city’s Investigative Committee] refused to elaborate on why a shot aimed to kill could hit a stooping victim well below the head and chest. She said the gunman shot at least once and that investigators had yet to determine whether other shots were fired.

The motive for the attack wasn’t clear last week, but unnamed sources told Russian media that Ivankov may have taken a side in a conflict between two Russian gangs.

Ivankov, 69, last made headlines four years ago, when he was acquitted of murdering two Turkish nationals and injuring a third in a Moscow restaurant in 1992. Before that, he spent nearly 10 years in US prison for extorting several million dollars from an investment advisory company run by two Russian businessmen. Ivankov had earlier served 10 years in Soviet prison for gangsterism, and has several tattoos that suggest membership in vory v zakone (“thieves in the law,” a Russian prison-based criminal monopoly that sprang to the top of the criminal hierarchy after the Soviet Union fell apart); some experts, however, doubted that Ivankov is the bad-ass the press have made him out to be:

Ivankov is clearly a serious criminal. Information from Russian authorities, his prison experience, and even his tattoos all suggest that he is a vor. He probably is the toughest Russian criminal in the United States, but it is doubtful that he is or was the head of a major criminal organization or a mafia boss. There is no evidence that he attempted to gain monopoly control over any criminal activities or that he systematically used violence or corruption. On the basis of this single crime, it is difficult to assess the economic, physical, psychological, and societal harm caused by his offenses. The description of the crime itself, however, suggests that it was a rather blundering effort. Finally, returning to one of our mafia criteria of organizational capacity for harm, Yaponchik was said to have had only a loosely affiliated group of some ten people and not an extensive and sophisticated criminal organization.

Ivankov was, however, acquitted at his 2005 murder trial after five eyewitnesses backpedaled in the courtroom , saying they’d never seen him before. Today, half of the 10 million people that testify in Russian courts every year are threatened , according to the Los Angeles Times, which also reported last week that the 20,000 of those that fall under Russia three-year-old witness protection program are not particularly safe either.

In tech news, Russian organized crime paved the way for sophisticated cyber-crime operations out of that country , a McAfee threat researcher said last week. Meanwhile, the iPhone remains a relative rarity in Russia : high prices ($700-800) and the fact that 400,000 black-market iPhones flooded the market before the phone’s official release combine to mean that Apple isn’t optimistic about meetings its goal to sell nearly 4 million phones in the country. 

Bulgaria Parliament Nods to New Government

Bulgaria’s parliament last week approved the new government led by Boyko Borisov , whose GERB party swept the Socialist-led government out of office in last month’s election.

In his speech before the parliament, Borisov, the former mayor of Sofia, promised to rid the country of corruption and win back the trust of the European Union, saying that the time had come to prove that Bulgaria can implement reforms and reduce the deficit.

Proving itself to the EU won’t be easy, but some of the new faces in the cabinet might be a good start. New justice minister Margarita Popova has been a prosecutor since 1990 and since last year has run a unit that fights EU-fundsrelated fraud. And Borisov’s new interior minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, isn’t wasting any time. He announced last week that he’d restart the Organized Crime Directorate , which was shut down last year after the then-interior minister was found to have met with organized crime figures.

Serbia to Decide onFate of Mobsters’ Property

A Serbian court will begin hearing arguments in September on whether a €1 million tract of land in a Belgrade suburb will be confiscated from the widows of two Serbian gangsters .

The 2,400 square meters of land in Zemun, known as the Silerova Street property in the press, was once owned by Zemun Clan heavies Dusan Spasojevic and Mile Lukovic. Both men were killed resisting arrest after Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in March 2003. Prosecutors allege that the land, which the men bought in 1997 and 1998, was bought with illicit funds. The defense says there’s no legal basis to confiscate the land, because no criminal charges were brought against the men until 2000.

Meanwhile, in Bosnia and Herzegovina…

While the Serbian government appears to be trying its best to go after criminals (and  their assets), the government in next-door Bosnia and Herzegovina last week appears to be doing all it can to throw a wrench in the process. BiH’s cabinet decided not to extend the mandates of the international judges and prosecutors , who’ve been part of the legal system since 2003. (Post-war Bosnia was divided into two “entities” – the Muslim-Croat Federation (FBiH) and the Republika Srpska (RS)– each with its own judiciary, police and other trappings of a state. Criminals operated freely between jurisdictions, and no court existed to tackle either serious state-wide organized crime or upper-echelon corruption.)

While the court has had its fair share of black eyes, even while the foreigners were  involved, it obviously struck a nerve somehow with the politicians on the Council of Ministers, who cited the costs of translations as the main reason to send the foreigners packing. Acting High Representative – the outside world’s governor-general – Raffi Gregorian remarked tartly that

“The explanation that the cost of translation for people working on terrorism, organized crime, and corruption cases was too high was a mere contrivance, as such costs are borne by international donations; the public knows the real reason behind this decision.”

Czech Republic: Crime Reports Contradictory

Two recent Czech government crime reports contradict each other , showing the difficulty in accurately measuring crime.

One report, by the Supreme State Attorney's Office (NSZ), points to a general leveling-off in crime in recent years, but emphasizes a spike in criminal activity by foreigners and increasing cases of human trafficking and prostitution.

A second report, by the Justice Ministry's Institute for Criminology and Social Prevention, emphasizes a greater need to combat organized crime and corruption among Czechs, even suggesting that the aforementioned NSZ needs to reform itself with special organized crime departments to deal with the growing threat.

Azerbaijan: Occupied Territories Ripe for OC

Azerbaijan’s territories occupied by Armenia are ripe for organized crime , Azeri deputy foreign minister Khalaf Khalafov said last week.

"Occupied territories are used not only for growing, distribution and traffic of drugs but for preparation of the international terrorist groups," Khalafov said.

Khalafov was talking about the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh , which has an Armenian majority that declared independence in 1992.