A powerful 1990s St. Petersburg mobster is on trial in Moscow for illegal corporate raiding, extortion, fraud and attempted murder, reports the New York Times, which calls the man’s downfall…
less a triumph for Russia’s justice system than the final stages of a power shift from the criminal gangs that were once the country’s ultimate arbiters to official government structures that nevertheless remain perforated by criminality and corruption.
Vladimir Barsukov founded the St. Petersburg-based Tumbov clan after the Soviet Union broke up. A 1994 assassination attempt left him with one arm and one kidney. Even his lawyer calls him “the last of the Mohicans.” The paper calls Barsukov’s rise and fall “a post-Soviet history of Russian criminality.”
He came of age during the raucous early days of Russian capitalism, parlaying underworld contacts made as a bouncer in Leningrad’s perestroika-era bars to found the Tambov crime syndicate, named after the Russian city where Mr. Barsukov and many of its leaders were born.
With government and law enforcement floundering, Mr. Barsukov and his gang acted with impunity, (St. Petersburg mob expert Vadim) Volkov and other experts say, opening casinos and strip clubs amid the imperial grandeur of St. Petersburg and muscling their way into some of Russia’s wealthiest industries, including oil and natural gas.
He was at the wheel of his Mercedes on June 1, 1994, when an assassin sprayed the car with bullets. His bodyguard was killed and Mr. Barsukov lost his right arm and a kidney in the attack, which was attributed to a rival faction of his gang. He spent about a month in a coma but miraculously survived, and then consolidated control over his band.
But around 2000, the rules began to change. A former political functionary in St. Petersburg, Vladimir V. Putin, took over as president of Russia vowing to consolidate power and end the freewheeling lawlessness that dominated the 1990s. Sensing the shift, Mr. Barsukov tried to change his tactics, replacing Kalashnikovs with accountants and changing his name from Kumarin to Barsukov, his mother’s maiden name.
Like a Russian John Gotti, Mr. Barsukov curried public sympathy by using his substantial fortune to support science, the arts and the Russian Orthodox Church. Shortly before his arrest, he used his criminal connections and violent reputation, according to news reports, to win the release of two children who had been kidnapped for ransom from a prominent St. Petersburg family.
Meanwhile, he continued to intimidate opponents while using his contacts in the police and tax service for illegal business takeovers, prosecutors said. His activities ultimately put him in direct conflict with St. Petersburg’s elected leaders. Among Mr. Barsukov’s many victims, according to the prosecutors in his trial, was a friend of Valentina I. Matviyenko, St. Petersburg’s governor.
In August 2007, 300 Moscow police commandos arrested Barsukov at his country house outside of St. Petersburg. His lawyer says the government’s evidence is checkered at best, and compared the prosecution to the politically motivated trial of former Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Also in Russia last week, a group of activists from Russian civic groups announced they wanted to establish a network of corruption victims to help Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s agenda of cracking down on corruption in the courts and civil service.
German Party Miffed at EC’s Switch on Bulgaria
A conservative party in Germany’s ruling coalition slammed the European Commission’s decision last week to unblock €115 million in aid to Bulgaria that had been frozen because of corruption. Bulgaria doesn’t deserve the aid, said the German Christian Social Union in a statement last week.
"Bulgaria joined the European Union too early in 2007. Neither then, nor now it manages to meet the criteria, which we, quite naturally, set for the new member states to meet. The transfer of payments for infrastructure and agriculture makes sense only when the money reaches users and is not diverted due to bureaucracy or corruption."
The money is intended to help improve Bulgaria’s dilapidated roads. Several hundred million euros for transitional assistance and agriculture are still frozen.
Brown: Overhaul to Combat OC
The UK will overhaul its failing Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) in an attempt to bring down rampant organized crime.
Speaking on crime for the first time since he became prime minister two years ago, Gordon Brown said the new strategy would include a new approach to e-crime and more aggressive police work to shut down business run by known criminals. A new police report covered by the Times of London last month revealed SOCA’s inadequacies three years after it was formed as Britain’s version of the FBI:
Last month The Times revealed that police have identified 2,800 organised criminal gangs, nearly three times the number previously acknowledged. The report from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary admitted that British law enforcement is ill equipped to deal with the threat that they pose.
The report stated: “The UK law enforcement community now knows more about organised criminality than ever before. Worryingly, though, this increased knowledge has highlighted the need for a more effective response by the police and other agencies.
“The reach of organised criminality is more extensive than previously acknowledged ... from local teams of criminals engaged in drug dealing and acquisitive crime through to international gangs committing acts of large-scale importation, kidnap, fraud and corruption.”
The report contrasted the nationwide spread of organised crime with the disjointed reaction of police and Soca. Britain’s response was described as blighted by a lack of direction, inadequate surveillance and under-investment in intelligence, analysis and enforcement.
Also in the UK last week, SOCA announced that crime lords are able to run their businesses from prison using interactive internet games. A spokesman for the Prison Service, however, said that jailbirds have not been allowed to use PlayStation 2 or 3, the Xbox 360 or the Nintendo DS for quite a while now, nor do prisoners have access to the type of wireless technology that these games consoles use.
Italy: Camorra Leader Arrested in Spain
Italian and Spanish police arrested an alleged Camorra leader on the Costa del Sol in Spain over the weekend, reported the BBC. Raffaele Amato, 44, had been on the run since 2006, when a Naples court issued an arrest warrant. He’s accused of eight murders between 1991 and 1993 and of importing cocaine into Italy.
Also last week, a Dutch court approved the extradition of an Italian man suspected of organizing and taking part in the 2007 murders of six other Italians outside a pizza parlor in Duisberg, Germany. The murders were thought to be revenge killings in a long-running war between two rival clans of the Calabrian mafia. The feud has left 16 people dead since its beginnings in 1991.
Giovanni Strangio, 30, will be handed over to Italy within the next 10 days. Strangio was arrested in the Netherlands in March.