The Everything Mafia Book (43 page)

The Russian Mafia is causing trouble in America, but its influence in the United States pales in comparison to the power it wields in Mother Russia. Dozens of political assassinations have been linked to the Russian mob, as well as assassinations of leading journalists, including the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.

Mafia Family, Russian Style

The Russian Mafia equivalent of the don is called the
pakhan
. This boss controls four operating “cells” through his second in command. This number two man is called the
brigadier
. Given that this crime family structure originated in Russia, where secret police once ruled with terror and fostered a paranoid environment, the pakhan employs spies to keep an eye on the brigadier. The cells are made up of the usual suspects—soldiers who deal in drugs, prostitution, extortion, bribery, and all manner of criminality. But the viscous nature off these groups makes it harder for authorities to track who’s really on top.

The members of the individual cells do not know members of the other cells, though they all report to the pakhan. This is a crime family of the Eastern European variety. Just as the American Mafia mirrors the legitimate capitalist world, the Russian Mafia reflects the communist regime where it was spawned.

Vyacheslav Ivankov

Courtesy of AP Images/Monika Graff

Vyacheslav Ivankov, center, allegedly a top boss of the Russian mob in Brooklyn, is flanked by FBI agents while being led in this file photo from the agency’s New York headquarters on Thursday June 8, 1995. Ivankov, fifty-six at the time, was convicted Monday July 8, 1996, with three co-defendants of trying to extort $3.5 million from two owners of Summit International, an investment advisory firm for Russian emigres.

Nothing is sacred, not even the Olympics. Russian gangster Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov is accused of putting the fix on the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, compelling judges to vote for the Russian figure skating team in exchange for votes for the French ice dancing team.

California Schemin’

The Russian Mafia sent emissaries out to the West Coast and established a foothold in San Francisco and Los Angeles. There is a steady stream of Russian Mafiosi heading across country to the sun and fun of California. Authorities believe this is happening because the American Mafia is least powerful on the West Coast. The Russian Mafia has to pay a heavy “tax” to the American Mafia when doing business in its territories. California represents more freedom and higher profits for them, not to mention a large pool of immigrants from which to draw recruits and victims to extort.

The first major Russian gang leader to be arrested in America was Vyacheslav Ivankov. He arrived in Brighton Beach in 1992 and immediately built a gang of more than 100 soldiers. He started extorting local businessmen. That led to his arrest in 1995. He was extradited to Russia in 2004 for murder charges but was acquitted. He is now in Russia.

The South American Connection

Since the breakup of the French Connection in the early 1970s, South American drug cartels, particularly those from Colombia, took up the slack with drugs. But unlike the heroin-dominated drug scene of the Mafia, the cartels were into marijuana and a new drug that was taking the party scene by storm, cocaine. Buoyed by celebrities and Studio 54, the coke scene became the hottest new trend and helped the emergence of a new organized crime force.

The Colombian Drug Cartels

The DEA as well as dozens of local and state agencies had its hands full with the Colombian drug cartels, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. These crime families are responsible for most of the cocaine that finds it way into the United States. Another DEA agent, Michael T. Horn, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, compared the American Mafia with these vicious new interlopers:

“In the twentieth century, ‘traditional organized crime’ in America rose to what was then considered unparalleled heights. These organizations were built around a hierarchy of leaders and members. This form of organized crime, although of immigrant background, was rooted on American soil. From our earliest exposure to traditional organized crime, a common thread has been and continues to be the violence with which these organizations are operated, expanded, and controlled.”

Like the Russian Mafia, the Colombian drug lords became the bad guys of the moment in television shows and movies in the 1980s and early 1990s. Tom Clancy’s intrepid hero Jack Ryan took them on in the novel Clear and Present Danger.

Ruthless People

The DEA agent quoted above minimizes the brutality of the Colombian drug cartels. Unlike the Mafia, who for the most part killed only their own, the drug cartels were notorious for slaughtering the entire families of their enemies in particularly nasty ways, including women and children. This would have horrified many of the older Mafia dons had they lived to see the horrors that the drug traffic wrought on the innocent.

Colombia produces coca, which is the plant from which cocaine is produced. The nation is geographically ideal for a brisk drug traffic industry. It is at the tip of the South American continent with hundreds of miles of coastline on both the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean and a little over two hours as the plane flies from the United States.

The Colombian drug cartels also worked with Mexican drug smugglers to transport cocaine into America across the United States/Mexico border. There is rampant corruption in the Mexican government and military, and it is not uncommon for military armored vehicles to accompany drug smugglers across the border and even fire upon the American border patrol officers.

Cartel Organization

The DEA assessed the structure and effectiveness of the Colombian drug cartel operations within the United States in one of its reports to Congress:

Members of international groups headquartered in Colombia and Mexico today have at their disposal sophisticated technology— encrypted phones, faxes, and other communications equipment.Additionally, they have in their arsenal aircraft, radar-equipped aircraft, weapons, and an army of workers who oversee the drug business from its raw beginnings in South American jungles to the urban areas within the United States. All of this modern technology and these vast resources enable the leaders of international criminal groups to build organizations that reach into the heartland of America, while they themselves try to remain beyond the reach of American justice. The traffickers also have the financial resources necessary to corrupt enough law enforcement, military, and political officials to create a relatively safe haven for themselves in the countries in which they make their headquarters.

Colombian cocaine trafficking groups in the United States— consisting of midlevel traffickers answering to the bosses in Colombia—continue to be organized around “cells” that operate within a given geographic area. Some cells specialize in a particular facet of the drug trade, such as cocaine transport, storage, wholesale distribution, or money laundering. Each cell, which may be comprised of ten or more employees, operates with little or no knowledge about the membership in, or drug operations of, other cells.