Interior Ministry: 'One-Tenth Of Russia Under Criminal Control'

Taken from The Independent, UK, 15 March 2007
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow

A leaked speech given by Russia's most senior policeman has revealed that almost one-tenth of the world's largest country is under the control of organised crime groups who often face little or no official resistance.

According to Rashid Nurgaliyev, the head of Russia's Interior Ministry, the Russian mafia is alarmingly well established in Moscow, St Petersburg, the south of the country, and in Siberia.

"This problem poses a threat to the state, society and the economy," he warned, adding that more than 3.8 million crimes were registered in 2006, up by 8.5 per cent on 2005.

He admitted that clear-up rates were less than satisfactory and said that criminals were caught in only 46 per cent of cases.

He listed dozens of districts of Moscow and other major cities where organised crime groups posed what he called "a serious threat to the safety of the region". In many cases law enforcement authorities were doing far too little to break the mafia's stranglehold on significant swaths of the economy, he said, adding that key sectors were already in criminal hands.

According to the daily newspaper Novye Izvestia, Mr Nurgaliyev's bleak assessment of the situation effectively means that one-tenth of Russia's regions are in criminal hands; in most cases the regions are among the country's wealthiest and most promising.

Experts in organised crime said separately that up to 25 per cent of Russia's gross domestic product is generated by the black economy, much of which is under the control of organised crime groups. It is a figure which dwarfs the size of the shadow economies in western European countries which typically account for between five and 10 per cent of countries' GDPs.

Aleksei Mukhin, a specialist in organised crime, added that Russia is home to up to 10,000 criminal groups employing 300,000 people. Most are paid to protect the businesses and assets of a small number of powerful mafia leaders.

Since the 1990s many of those leaders have legitimised their businesses. They clean up their image by setting up superficially normal companies and thereby acquire a veneer of respectability.

At the same time, crime rates have fallen as mafia groups have moved to maintain law and order on their own patches. They eschew messy shoot-outs which only attract attention for backroom deals and bribes.

Mr Nurgaliyev's revelations coincide with one of President Vladimir Putin's biggest anti-corruption drives of recent years. Across the country, local politicians and regional governors have found themselves charged with embezzlement and abuse of power.

Perhaps the most high-profile victim of this purge has been Vladimir Nikolayev, mayor of the far-eastern city of Vladivostok and a member of Mr Putin's United Russia party. Earlier this month, the mayor was arrested. He already had a criminal record, for beating a local official and threatening to kill another, and boasted the underworld nickname of Winnie the Pooh. This time he has been accused of funding his bodyguards from city coffers, of using police cars for private escort duty and of using expensive charter planes for family holidays at taxpayers' expense.

Mr Nikolayev denies all the charges, insisting he has been framed. The mayor owns some of the region's biggest seafood, meat processing and timber firms and came to power in 2004 after his closest rival for the job "tripped" on a powerful grenade that had been placed outside his office days before the election.

Usually, businessmen with backgrounds as colourful as Mr Nikolayev's tend to prefer lower-profile roles. They place trusted lieutenants in important political positions in order to attract less attention.