Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 14, 1993 TAG: 9308140108
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SONNI EFRON LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Long
At Russia's fortress-like police headquarters, Officer Vladimir Petukhov, the harried and dour veteran lawman in charge of investigating contract killings, estimated that 100 to 150 businessmen have been murdered this year by extortionists, gangsters and free-lance hit men. The gangland-style bombing at the home of the manager of a Russian-Swiss venture raised no eyebrows.
"I wish I could tell you something," Petukhov said. "But, unfortunately, we have so many of such cases these days, I just don't remember it."
Moscow has become a lawless place, where former KGB agents hire themselves out as bodyguards to jittery Western executives and where machine-gun slayings are a near-daily event. Muscovites compare their staid, gray city to Al Capone's Chicago - with onion domes.
To Russians, no new crime is more exotic, more thrillingly American, more chilling than murder for hire. Contract killing, especially of businessmen, has become emblematic of the broader breakdown of authority and the evolution of a market-driven economic free-for-all.
Capitalism thrives in the death-for-dollars racket. Some of the killers have been hired by business rivals to eliminate the competition.
The price for snuffing out a life ranges from a bottle of vodka - if the deal is among friends - up to several thousand dollars for a prominent or well-defended target, Petukhov said.
The killings have terrified the entrepreneurs who are supposed to be investing in Russia's economy but must also invest in bodyguards and security systems. No foreign businessmen have been assassinated, but concern is rising that the tide of crime may discourage their interest in Russian projects.
Five senior bankers recently wrote an open letter to President Boris Yeltsin pleading for protection against a wave of intimidation and murder.
Gangsters have commissioned the killings of at least 10 bankers in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Ekaterinburg (an emerging Urals business center formerly known as Sverdlovsk) in an attempt to gain control of large commercial banks, according to the letter.
Said Konstantin N. Borovoi, another leading businessman and chairman of the new, pro-business Economic Freedom Party, "The state can do nothing to protect private enterprise from an all-out attack by the Mafia. All this paralyzes the will and initiative of many businessmen. It is especially damaging at this stage when private business is not yet on firm footing."
Crime of all kinds began skyrocketing across the former Soviet Union as soon as Big Brother stopped watching. Russia's murder rate has almost tripled since began and was 19.9 per 100,000 residents in the first six months of this year - double the American rate.
Gangs are blamed for much of the crime wave. Police say Russia has almost 3,300 organized crime groups, some armed with Kalashnikov submachine guns, hand grenades and other leftovers from the splintered Soviet army.
The new Mafiosi are easy to spot in Moscow's pricier restaurants. They shamelessly ape every cliche of the Hollywood gangster movie. They favor Italianate zoot suits and bottled blondes in Lycra. They sneer through clouds of cigarette smoke and speak an incomprehensible slang.
Their violent conduct is even more jarring: In one bloody week in July, they staged gangland shootouts in Moscow that killed eight people and wounded six more.
Four people were killed when seven men from Chechenya - the southern republic that is gaining a reputation as the Sicily of Russia - drove up to a Russian-Italian auto dealership on Leninsky Prospekt and started shooting in apparent retaliation for the business' failure to pay protection money.
Until Soviet police could and did arrest hooligans - and dissidents - for failure to work, a crime usually punished by a year at hard labor. Now, beleaguered authorities are overrun by brazen narcotics traffickers, kidnappers, bombers, counterfeiters and even train robbers - and arrest and conviction rates are dropping.
While most of Russia struggles to convert to capitalism, the bad guys have quickly found their market niche.
In the Soviet Union, murder for hire was simply unheard of, except in decadent Western crime thrillers. Now, the Russian press runs splashy interviews with hit men known by the English word
One group of free-lance hit men told the magazine Ogonyok that two-thirds of their clients are women who want to do in their men. Any person can be killed, even Yeltsin himself, they boasted, "if only it is paid for."
While state-inspired fear once made Soviet citizens law-abiding, the anarchic Russian democracy has come to mean liberation for criminals, a license to make money by importing the seamiest aspects of Western culture. Prime-time television carries commercials for gas pistols, brass knuckles and other weapons; hard-core pornography is sold openly a few steps away from the once-dreaded KGB headquarters.
"All the social and law-enforcement structures that used to restrain people were liquidated by `democracy,' " Petukhov said.
By July, at least 32 Russians had been killed by paid assassins, Stolitsa magazine reported. The victims included two imprisoned gang kingpins, three lawmakers, a factory director and the head of a military academy.
Russians who do business with the West - including emigres who come back to help cinch deals for their foreign employers - are presumed to be awash in hard currency and are at special risk for extortion, muggings, kidnap and murder.
In the past month, the 36-year-old director of a Russian-Canadian company and a partner in the Russian-American Tren-Mos restaurant here were each murdered in what appeared to be professional hits.
In the early days of police considered businessmen to be economic criminals and were slow to protect them. The image of businessmen as speculators, parasites and Mafiosi is still widespread.
"There is a very anti-business tendency in Russia today," said the friend of the woman murdered in the bomb attack. "I can't say people are reading these articles [about slain businessmen] with sorrow and pity." He said the prevailing attitude is, "You drive a Mercedes, you are killed. Too bad for you."
by CNB