Blowing Up Russia (31 page)
Authors: Alexander Litvinenko
Tags: #History, #Europe, #Russia & the Former Soviet Union, #Political Science, #General, #Intelligence & Espionage, #Terrorism, #World, #Russian & Former Soviet Union, #Social Science, #Violence in Society, #True Crime, #Espionage, #Murder
The abductions of Chechens in Chechnya by federal agencies of coercion in order to punish them, extort ransom or kill them were almost heroic exploits that went uninvestigated and unpunished. The police of the October Temporary Department of Internal Affairs in Grozny, led by Colonel Sukhov and Major V.V. Ivanovsky, was suspected by journalists and public figures of abducting and killing about 120 inhabitants of Grozny and other regions of Chechnya. The corpses were presumed to have been dumped in the basement of a building on territory which was guarded by the October Temporary Department of Internal Affairs. The policemen later blew up this building, in order to cover up their crimes.
The organization of security sweeps in order to abduct Chechens and extort ransom for the release of hostages, became an everyday event, a part of life in wartime. Cases are
157
158
even known of Russian officers selling Russian soldiers to Chechen bandits as slaves, and then declaring them deserters.
The war in Chechnya has made human life cheap in Russia. Brutal killings and trade in slaves and hostages have become the norm. Tens of thousands of young people have gone through the war. They will not be able to return to civilian life.
Chechnya is the FSB s workshop, the training ground for the future personnel of the Russian secret services and freelance brigades of mercenary killers. The longer this war goes on, the more irreversible its consequences become. The most frightening of them is hatred. Chechen hatred of Russians. Russian hatred of Chechens. This conflict was created artificially by the coercive agencies of Russia, mainly the Federal Security Service.
158
159
Chapter 11
The FSB: reform or dissolution?
All according to plan!
Youth slogan invented by Putin s PR-team Why blame us, you who know everything? For evil, all is according to plan, even a clean conscience.
Vladimir Vysotsky For the sake of objectivity, we should point out that attempts to reform the FSB from within have been made by isolated individuals in the system, but they have not been successful. On the contrary, efforts made by individual FSB officers to maintain the honor of the ranks of the special agencies and the crushing defeat suffered by heroic individuals in this war have only served to demonstrate, yet, again, that reform of the FSB is impossible, and this agency of the state must be abolished. One of the many documents which make this clear is a letter addressed to Russian President Yeltsin on May 5, 1997, long before the bombings of the apartment buildings. Since in the first edition of this book we published this letter without its author s knowledge or consent, we felt we had no right to give his name. However, by the time of the second edition a significant change has taken place in his life: he has been arrested. For this reason we have made the decision to publish his name. The author of the letter to Yeltsin was former FSB colonel and lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin. Trepashkin was arrested in Moscow in 2003 on the fabricated charge of illegal weapons possession and divulging state secrets (espionage). He is still in prison.
On the unlawful activities of a number of officials of the FSB RF Dear Boris Nikolaievich, Circumstances oblige me to appeal to you personally in view of the fact that the director of the Federal Security Services Colonel-General N.D. Kovalyov, and other leaders of the FSB RF are taking no measures to deal with the problems of state security in Russia raised by myself in reports and statements, which I have forwarded to them beginning in
159 Chapter 11
1996.
In recent years, organized criminal groups have been attempting to infiltrate the FSB RF by any possible means. Initially, the most common approach was to establish relations with individual members of the FSB RF and engage in criminal activity under their protection ( roof ). And then these groups moved on to delegating their members to join the ranks of the FSB RF. They are accepted for service via acquaintances working in the personnel departments or as section leaders.
1996.
160
The infiltration of members of criminal groups into the ranks of the FSB RF was particularly intensive under M.I. Barsukov and N.D. Kovalyov. Under these leaders, a number of members of the Solntsevo, Podolsk, and other criminal groups were taken into the service& In order to ensure their safety the right people were promoted to key posts. At the same time, a number of professionals with extensive operational experience were dismissed without due cause. All of this took place with the connivance of former personnel section officer N.P. Patrushev.
The actions of FSB RF leaders, Barsukov, Kovalyov, and Patrushev, are intended to force professionals out of the structures of the FSB RF in favor of criminal elements. For instance, when Patrushev was appointed to the post of head of the Internal Security Department of the FSB RF, instead of combating criminal groupings, he began to persecute members of the FSB, professionals with long experience of the fight against crime, and forced them to resign from the security agencies. As a result, the department ceased pursuing cases against armed criminal groups.
At the present time, former head of the Internal Security Department of the FSB RF Patrushev has been transferred to the post of head of the Administration and Inspection Department of the FSB RF, and Kovalyov has replaced him by Zotov, concerning whose connections with criminal organizations a lot of information has been supplied to the FSB. Prior to this appointment, Zotov supervised the anti-terrorist center, which had almost no successful operational activities to its name, while at the same time terrorist acts were being committed and continue to be committed on all sides and in Moscow alone large amounts of illegal weapons and munitions are in circulation. It was Zotov who, in December 1995, made special efforts to block the progress of a case dealing with a Chechen organized criminal group. According to operational sources, Zotov was given a present of a foreign-made jeep-style automobile by one of the groups, which he sold on his appointment to a general s post in order to conceal the fact.
Kovalyov has appointed a number of officers to general s posts without regard for professional ability or services in the field, but on the basis of acquaintance and loyalty to the director. For instance, in August 1996, a Long-Term Programs Department was established within the FSB RF. This department, directly subordinate to FSB RF director Kovalyov, absorbed a considerable number of professional personnel from other sections.
However, no one in the FSB knows why Kovalyov maintains this department, since its aims and objectives and the functional responsibilities of its personnel have yet to be defined. In, effect the Long-Term Programs Department of the FSB RF does nothing to combat crime, but guarantees the safety of non-state organizations (such as the Stealth Company and others). Nonetheless, friends of Kovalyov-Khokholkov, Stepanov, and Ovchinnikov-have been appointed to general s posts in the Long-Term Programs Department. The first two have already also received their general s epaulettes.
Khokholkov and Ovchinnikov had both previously been investigated by the Internal Security Department of the FSB RF. The first maintained close relations with bandits and accepted monetary remuneration from them, so that he could afford to lose as much as 25,000 U.S. dollars in a single night at a casino&
160
161
The bandit Stalmakhov, who is well known to the RUOP GUVD of the city of Moscow, stated in conversation with one of our sources that since 1993, the members of his group, which included a number of former employees of the KGB USSR, had engaged in smuggling activities. Their criminal activities were covered up in exchange for monetary remuneration by highly placed members of the FSB RF, including generals of the Economic Department of the FSB, Poryadin and Kononov, Moscow Region UFSB General Trofimov, and director of the FSB RF, N.D. Kovalyov, was informed of this. In February 1994, in my capacity as senior investigator for especially important cases of the Investigative Department of the MB RF, I detained nine automobiles ( wagons ) containing contraband goods with a value of more than three million U.S. dollars. Due to measures taken by the officials named above, the contraband was released and stored at the factory Hammer and Sickle, from where it was subsequently illegally sold. A number of trumped-up claims were made that I was involved in extortion, which made it impossible for me to work on locating the contraband goods.
Likewise alarming are the leaks of operational information from the FSB RF to criminal organizations.
Head of the FSB RF N.D. Kovalyov (and before him, M.I. Barsukov), and department heads Patrushev and Zotov, are thwarting efforts to curtail the criminal activity of organized groups guilty of committing serious crimes, in particular efforts to curtail the criminal activity of Chechens in the city of Moscow& An operation that relied on available materials led to the arrest of members of a Chechen organized crime group involved in the extortion of 1.5 billion rubles and approximately 30,000 U.S. dollars on the premises of the commercial bank Soldi. Those arrested included V.D. Novikov;
L.M. Bakaev; and also K.N. Azizbekian, head of the security agency Kobra-9 ; Colonel G.U. Golubovsky, group leader in the general staff of Russian Army; Senior Police Lieutenant V.V. Uglanov, an operative of the Moscow OBPSE GUVD.
Individuals who were arrested while assisting the extortionists to enter the bank included organized crime group members B.B. Khanshev and S.A. Aytupaev, as well as three agents of the Moscow police - Moscow OEP GUVD Senior Operative and Police Major G.F. Dmitriev, GAI Department Chief and Police Major V.I. Pavlov (both armed), and Junior Police Officer I.A. Kolesnikov.
In the course of the interrogation it was established that this organized crime group received substantial assistance in resolving issues of a criminal nature from the consultant of the General Staff Academy of the Russian Federation, Major General Yu.I. Tarasenko, who was paid 5,000-10,000 U.S. dollars monthly by V.D. Novikov. After being interrogated, Tarasenko acknowledged that he had received financial compensation from V.D. Novikov and K.N. Azizbekian, and admitted that he directed officers of the army general staff and police agents to assist the Chechen organized crime group.
On 1 December 1995 the investigative division of the 3rd RUVD TsAO of the City of Moscow filed criminal charge No. 055277 in accordance with statute 148, article 5, of the criminal code of the Russian Federation.
161
162
In the course of the initial investigative, operational and search measures, it was established that, in addition to extortion, the members of the above-named criminal group had committed murders in Moscow and in Chechnya, had stored weapons and munitions at an illegal depot outside Moscow and had moved weapons and munitions from the military depots in the town of Elektrogorsk to areas of military operations in Chechnya.
Since I was one of the leaders of the operation, I played an important role in the uncovering the criminal activity of the Chechen organized crime group. However, already at the beginning of December 1995, I was removed from the case in connection with a work-related background examination, and the weapon I had been issued was recalled. The causes and grounds of the background examination remain unknown to me to this day.
Upon completion of the background examination, an order was issued on 8 February 1996 (No. 034) concerning my punishment for supposedly undermining the operation, although the materials of criminal case No. 055277, the letters of the Moscow RUOP GUVD office, the 3rd RUVD TsAO of the City of Moscow, and the Tver general prosecutor s office, state precisely the opposite.
The members of the commissions, referring to aforementioned indications, reached a fabricated conclusion and determined that in arresting dangerous criminals I had exceeded my legitimate authority. These circumstances served as grounds for my dismissal from work related to uncovering the activities of criminal groups.
According to operational data in my possession, the members of the aforementioned criminal group allocated 100,000 U.S. dollars to blocking the work on the case and declared that they had enough funds to buy the FSB and the MVD and the Ministry of Defense.
A brief comment on the outcome of the opposition offered by Trepashkin at the time of the first edition of this book in 2002. Following his letter to Yeltsin, Trepashkin was dismissed from the service. Zdanovich slandered him in the media, accusing him of being a common criminal. The dismissed officer took the leadership of the FSB to court.
During the court hearings, which lasted for more than a year, the leadership of the FSB planned and carried out two attempts on the lieutenant colonel s life. However, somehow he managed to survive and win his case, in which one of the respondents was Patrushev.
Unfortunately, the new director of the FSB (who was Putin) refused to implement the court s decision, even though it carried the force of law, thereby demonstrating, yet again, the impossibility of reforming the FSB or of combating it on the basis of the existing legislation. In 2003, after the former FSB officer became the lawyer of the sisters Tatyana and Alyona Morozov (whose mother died in an apartment-house bombing in Moscow in September 1999) and offered to represent their family s interests in a case involving the investigation of the terrorist attacks committed by Russian security agencies, Trepashkin was finally arrested.
162
163
There is nothing surprising about the idea of dissolving the FSB. In December 1999, perhaps under the influence of the bombings in Russia, the newspapers carried information concerning a planned dissolution of the FSB. This is what one of the Moscow papers printed: According to well-informed sources, in the next few days. a new armed law enforcement agency may be set up on similar lines to the FBI in the USA. It is presumed that the job of heading up the new structure will be given to an officer with the rank of First Deputy Prime Minister. According to our information, it is planned to appoint the present minister of the interior Rushailo& It is intended to endow the new department with the function of supervising all of the agencies of law enforcement, including FAPSI, the MVD, the FSB, the Ministry of Defense, and so on. The new department will be based primarily on the structures of the MVD. At the initial stage, it will take from the FSB the departments for combating terrorism and political extremism and economic counterintelligence. And if in the future the new department should also absorb the counterintelligence functions, the FSB will effectively cease to exist.
The organization of security sweeps in order to abduct Chechens and extort ransom for the release of hostages, became an everyday event, a part of life in wartime. Cases are
157
158
even known of Russian officers selling Russian soldiers to Chechen bandits as slaves, and then declaring them deserters.
The war in Chechnya has made human life cheap in Russia. Brutal killings and trade in slaves and hostages have become the norm. Tens of thousands of young people have gone through the war. They will not be able to return to civilian life.
Chechnya is the FSB s workshop, the training ground for the future personnel of the Russian secret services and freelance brigades of mercenary killers. The longer this war goes on, the more irreversible its consequences become. The most frightening of them is hatred. Chechen hatred of Russians. Russian hatred of Chechens. This conflict was created artificially by the coercive agencies of Russia, mainly the Federal Security Service.
158
159
Chapter 11
The FSB: reform or dissolution?
All according to plan!
Youth slogan invented by Putin s PR-team Why blame us, you who know everything? For evil, all is according to plan, even a clean conscience.
Vladimir Vysotsky For the sake of objectivity, we should point out that attempts to reform the FSB from within have been made by isolated individuals in the system, but they have not been successful. On the contrary, efforts made by individual FSB officers to maintain the honor of the ranks of the special agencies and the crushing defeat suffered by heroic individuals in this war have only served to demonstrate, yet, again, that reform of the FSB is impossible, and this agency of the state must be abolished. One of the many documents which make this clear is a letter addressed to Russian President Yeltsin on May 5, 1997, long before the bombings of the apartment buildings. Since in the first edition of this book we published this letter without its author s knowledge or consent, we felt we had no right to give his name. However, by the time of the second edition a significant change has taken place in his life: he has been arrested. For this reason we have made the decision to publish his name. The author of the letter to Yeltsin was former FSB colonel and lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin. Trepashkin was arrested in Moscow in 2003 on the fabricated charge of illegal weapons possession and divulging state secrets (espionage). He is still in prison.
On the unlawful activities of a number of officials of the FSB RF Dear Boris Nikolaievich, Circumstances oblige me to appeal to you personally in view of the fact that the director of the Federal Security Services Colonel-General N.D. Kovalyov, and other leaders of the FSB RF are taking no measures to deal with the problems of state security in Russia raised by myself in reports and statements, which I have forwarded to them beginning in
159 Chapter 11
1996.
In recent years, organized criminal groups have been attempting to infiltrate the FSB RF by any possible means. Initially, the most common approach was to establish relations with individual members of the FSB RF and engage in criminal activity under their protection ( roof ). And then these groups moved on to delegating their members to join the ranks of the FSB RF. They are accepted for service via acquaintances working in the personnel departments or as section leaders.
1996.
160
The infiltration of members of criminal groups into the ranks of the FSB RF was particularly intensive under M.I. Barsukov and N.D. Kovalyov. Under these leaders, a number of members of the Solntsevo, Podolsk, and other criminal groups were taken into the service& In order to ensure their safety the right people were promoted to key posts. At the same time, a number of professionals with extensive operational experience were dismissed without due cause. All of this took place with the connivance of former personnel section officer N.P. Patrushev.
The actions of FSB RF leaders, Barsukov, Kovalyov, and Patrushev, are intended to force professionals out of the structures of the FSB RF in favor of criminal elements. For instance, when Patrushev was appointed to the post of head of the Internal Security Department of the FSB RF, instead of combating criminal groupings, he began to persecute members of the FSB, professionals with long experience of the fight against crime, and forced them to resign from the security agencies. As a result, the department ceased pursuing cases against armed criminal groups.
At the present time, former head of the Internal Security Department of the FSB RF Patrushev has been transferred to the post of head of the Administration and Inspection Department of the FSB RF, and Kovalyov has replaced him by Zotov, concerning whose connections with criminal organizations a lot of information has been supplied to the FSB. Prior to this appointment, Zotov supervised the anti-terrorist center, which had almost no successful operational activities to its name, while at the same time terrorist acts were being committed and continue to be committed on all sides and in Moscow alone large amounts of illegal weapons and munitions are in circulation. It was Zotov who, in December 1995, made special efforts to block the progress of a case dealing with a Chechen organized criminal group. According to operational sources, Zotov was given a present of a foreign-made jeep-style automobile by one of the groups, which he sold on his appointment to a general s post in order to conceal the fact.
Kovalyov has appointed a number of officers to general s posts without regard for professional ability or services in the field, but on the basis of acquaintance and loyalty to the director. For instance, in August 1996, a Long-Term Programs Department was established within the FSB RF. This department, directly subordinate to FSB RF director Kovalyov, absorbed a considerable number of professional personnel from other sections.
However, no one in the FSB knows why Kovalyov maintains this department, since its aims and objectives and the functional responsibilities of its personnel have yet to be defined. In, effect the Long-Term Programs Department of the FSB RF does nothing to combat crime, but guarantees the safety of non-state organizations (such as the Stealth Company and others). Nonetheless, friends of Kovalyov-Khokholkov, Stepanov, and Ovchinnikov-have been appointed to general s posts in the Long-Term Programs Department. The first two have already also received their general s epaulettes.
Khokholkov and Ovchinnikov had both previously been investigated by the Internal Security Department of the FSB RF. The first maintained close relations with bandits and accepted monetary remuneration from them, so that he could afford to lose as much as 25,000 U.S. dollars in a single night at a casino&
160
161
The bandit Stalmakhov, who is well known to the RUOP GUVD of the city of Moscow, stated in conversation with one of our sources that since 1993, the members of his group, which included a number of former employees of the KGB USSR, had engaged in smuggling activities. Their criminal activities were covered up in exchange for monetary remuneration by highly placed members of the FSB RF, including generals of the Economic Department of the FSB, Poryadin and Kononov, Moscow Region UFSB General Trofimov, and director of the FSB RF, N.D. Kovalyov, was informed of this. In February 1994, in my capacity as senior investigator for especially important cases of the Investigative Department of the MB RF, I detained nine automobiles ( wagons ) containing contraband goods with a value of more than three million U.S. dollars. Due to measures taken by the officials named above, the contraband was released and stored at the factory Hammer and Sickle, from where it was subsequently illegally sold. A number of trumped-up claims were made that I was involved in extortion, which made it impossible for me to work on locating the contraband goods.
Likewise alarming are the leaks of operational information from the FSB RF to criminal organizations.
Head of the FSB RF N.D. Kovalyov (and before him, M.I. Barsukov), and department heads Patrushev and Zotov, are thwarting efforts to curtail the criminal activity of organized groups guilty of committing serious crimes, in particular efforts to curtail the criminal activity of Chechens in the city of Moscow& An operation that relied on available materials led to the arrest of members of a Chechen organized crime group involved in the extortion of 1.5 billion rubles and approximately 30,000 U.S. dollars on the premises of the commercial bank Soldi. Those arrested included V.D. Novikov;
L.M. Bakaev; and also K.N. Azizbekian, head of the security agency Kobra-9 ; Colonel G.U. Golubovsky, group leader in the general staff of Russian Army; Senior Police Lieutenant V.V. Uglanov, an operative of the Moscow OBPSE GUVD.
Individuals who were arrested while assisting the extortionists to enter the bank included organized crime group members B.B. Khanshev and S.A. Aytupaev, as well as three agents of the Moscow police - Moscow OEP GUVD Senior Operative and Police Major G.F. Dmitriev, GAI Department Chief and Police Major V.I. Pavlov (both armed), and Junior Police Officer I.A. Kolesnikov.
In the course of the interrogation it was established that this organized crime group received substantial assistance in resolving issues of a criminal nature from the consultant of the General Staff Academy of the Russian Federation, Major General Yu.I. Tarasenko, who was paid 5,000-10,000 U.S. dollars monthly by V.D. Novikov. After being interrogated, Tarasenko acknowledged that he had received financial compensation from V.D. Novikov and K.N. Azizbekian, and admitted that he directed officers of the army general staff and police agents to assist the Chechen organized crime group.
On 1 December 1995 the investigative division of the 3rd RUVD TsAO of the City of Moscow filed criminal charge No. 055277 in accordance with statute 148, article 5, of the criminal code of the Russian Federation.
161
162
In the course of the initial investigative, operational and search measures, it was established that, in addition to extortion, the members of the above-named criminal group had committed murders in Moscow and in Chechnya, had stored weapons and munitions at an illegal depot outside Moscow and had moved weapons and munitions from the military depots in the town of Elektrogorsk to areas of military operations in Chechnya.
Since I was one of the leaders of the operation, I played an important role in the uncovering the criminal activity of the Chechen organized crime group. However, already at the beginning of December 1995, I was removed from the case in connection with a work-related background examination, and the weapon I had been issued was recalled. The causes and grounds of the background examination remain unknown to me to this day.
Upon completion of the background examination, an order was issued on 8 February 1996 (No. 034) concerning my punishment for supposedly undermining the operation, although the materials of criminal case No. 055277, the letters of the Moscow RUOP GUVD office, the 3rd RUVD TsAO of the City of Moscow, and the Tver general prosecutor s office, state precisely the opposite.
The members of the commissions, referring to aforementioned indications, reached a fabricated conclusion and determined that in arresting dangerous criminals I had exceeded my legitimate authority. These circumstances served as grounds for my dismissal from work related to uncovering the activities of criminal groups.
According to operational data in my possession, the members of the aforementioned criminal group allocated 100,000 U.S. dollars to blocking the work on the case and declared that they had enough funds to buy the FSB and the MVD and the Ministry of Defense.
A brief comment on the outcome of the opposition offered by Trepashkin at the time of the first edition of this book in 2002. Following his letter to Yeltsin, Trepashkin was dismissed from the service. Zdanovich slandered him in the media, accusing him of being a common criminal. The dismissed officer took the leadership of the FSB to court.
During the court hearings, which lasted for more than a year, the leadership of the FSB planned and carried out two attempts on the lieutenant colonel s life. However, somehow he managed to survive and win his case, in which one of the respondents was Patrushev.
Unfortunately, the new director of the FSB (who was Putin) refused to implement the court s decision, even though it carried the force of law, thereby demonstrating, yet again, the impossibility of reforming the FSB or of combating it on the basis of the existing legislation. In 2003, after the former FSB officer became the lawyer of the sisters Tatyana and Alyona Morozov (whose mother died in an apartment-house bombing in Moscow in September 1999) and offered to represent their family s interests in a case involving the investigation of the terrorist attacks committed by Russian security agencies, Trepashkin was finally arrested.
162
163
There is nothing surprising about the idea of dissolving the FSB. In December 1999, perhaps under the influence of the bombings in Russia, the newspapers carried information concerning a planned dissolution of the FSB. This is what one of the Moscow papers printed: According to well-informed sources, in the next few days. a new armed law enforcement agency may be set up on similar lines to the FBI in the USA. It is presumed that the job of heading up the new structure will be given to an officer with the rank of First Deputy Prime Minister. According to our information, it is planned to appoint the present minister of the interior Rushailo& It is intended to endow the new department with the function of supervising all of the agencies of law enforcement, including FAPSI, the MVD, the FSB, the Ministry of Defense, and so on. The new department will be based primarily on the structures of the MVD. At the initial stage, it will take from the FSB the departments for combating terrorism and political extremism and economic counterintelligence. And if in the future the new department should also absorb the counterintelligence functions, the FSB will effectively cease to exist.
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