Crime Without Punishment

Ariel Cohen

Reexamining Russia

It has long been obvious to all who grasp the disastrous legacy of communism that building democracy in Russia will be no easy task. Seven decades of totalitarian rule, which obliterated private property, economic markets, civil society, mutual trust, and any real concept of citizenship, are not a promising foundation on which to build democratic institutions. In many ways, given the enormity of the obstacles confronting it, Russia has made impressive strides toward democracy and a market economy. Yet even these partial and precarious gains are now imperiled by a danger that few, if anyone, foresaw.

A tidal wave of crime and corruption is sweeping across the Eurasian landmass, threatening to overwhelm the region's fragile democratic and market reforms. Russia alone is home to thousands of gangs and hardened criminals, and hundreds of mob bosses and illegal organizations with international connections. Tens of thousands of businesses are controlled by organized crime; their gross product is higher than the GNP of many UN members, including several post-Soviet states. ¹ The Russian mafiya (a generic term used to refer to all organized crime in the former USSR) is estimated to be worth at least $10 billion. ² In 1993, more Russians died in criminal violence than did Soviet soldiers during the nine years of war in Afghanistan. ³ In 1994, more than a hundred people were kidnapped and held for ransom in Moscow alone. The situation in other post-Soviet states is even worse: in some of them, criminal gangs have actually controlled the value of the national currency. ⁴ [End Page 34]

The crime wave could have grave political consequences for Russia, Ukraine, and their neighbors in East Central Europe. Ordinary people, feeling unsafe in the streets, are beginning to regard democracy as the freedom to loot and murder. Crime and corruption, together with pressing economic problems, may well prompt a hard-line backlash in Russia and the ascension to power of an ultranationalist such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky or an imperialist strongman like General Alexander Lebed.

Crime itself has become a major post-Soviet export. Drugs, weapons, and--most alarming of all--nuclear components are being smuggled out of Russia into Western Europe, the United States, and Asia. Criminal syndicates and terrorist organizations around the world can now hire former KGB officers expert in eavesdropping, assassination, and paramilitary tactics. Today, shady businessmen from the East produce briefcases full of cash--up to $3 million at a time--to buy expensive real estate in the West, thus tainting Western economies with huge infusions of illegally obtained money.

There is evidence that top officials of the Russian government are involved in criminal activities, although the administration of President Boris Yeltsin has done very little to investigate charges against them. Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and former First Deputy Defense Minister Matvei Burlakov were accused by the Russian press of arranging the murder of a popular investigative journalist, Dmitrii Kholodov of Moskovskii komsomolets, who was killed by an exploding briefcase in October 1994. Kholodov had published a series of startling exposés on military corruption and was about to testify before a committee of the State Duma when he was assassinated; he reportedly had been told by a source within the Russian military intelligence that the briefcase contained documents exposing corruption in the military. Burlakov was fired, but has escaped prosecution, as has a corrupt deputy finance minister who was recently sacked.

In March 1995, veteran broadcaster Vladislav Listyev, the director-designate of Russia's national television network, was shot to death execution-style in the vestibule of his Moscow apartment building. His murder, which police admitted they had little hope of solving, appeared to be connected with his plans to attack widespread corruption in the sale of television advertising, corruption in which the mafiya is heavily involved. The Listyev case quickly became a flashpoint in the smoldering political conflict between Moscow mayor (and potential presidential candidate) Yuri Luzhkov and President Yeltsin.

Officials of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) have participated in fraud and forgery that have cost Russian taxpayers more than $350 million. The incompetent former chairman of the bank, Viktor Gerashchenko, was fired, but it is unlikely that his dismissal will have any effect on the level of fraud in the CBR. In spite of its political and [End Page 35] economic reforms, Russia is heading toward an abyss of contract killings, arms smuggling, extortion, drug trafficking, money laundering, and bank fraud.

Indeed, according to investigative journalist Claire Sterling, Eastern Europe and Russia have become one big "washing machine" in which huge sums of drug money are laundered. ⁵ The Sicilian Mafia, Colombia's Cali cocaine cartel, and the Japanese Yakuza quickly established footholds in Russia, while legitimate businessmen sat on the fence, waiting for the political storms to pass. From the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea, the huge Eurasian landmass is in danger of becoming a den of thieves.

Gangsters Then and Now

Despite their rhetoric, the old communist regimes failed to transform their subjects into "new Soviet men." While the Bolsheviks were uniquely successful in destroying religion, the rule of law, and traditional family values, the criminal underworld--which predated the Bolsheviks--survived the more than 70 years of communist rule.

Until the collapse of communism, however, the state had a virtual monopoly on violence, inspiring much greater terror than any criminal gang. The prerevolutionary Bolsheviks recruited gangsters to commit crimes--for example, bank robberies--designed to finance their employer's activities. Stalin personally planned and led some of the more daring "expropriations" in the Caucasus. Later, some criminals worked for the Cheka, the predecessor of the KGB. In Stalin's Gulag, the ordinary criminals among the inmates were considered "socially close" to the regime, creating a de facto alliance against political prisoners, who were branded "counterrevolutionaries" and "enemies of the people." In the late 1980s, communists and former KGB officials began to join the entrepreneurial ranks, which now operated legally. As the power of the KGB and the Communist Party waned, the reign of increasingly emboldened criminal organizations began. By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, the transformed criminal-political and business elite had already begun to enjoy the spoils.

A wide variety of black-market activities have come to generate multimillion-dollar profits for corrupt Russian officials and their criminal associates. The illegal export of natural resources, such as oil, metals, timber, and diamonds, has become the most lucrative activity of these elements, with drug trafficking a close second. Moreover, the sale of arms--including weapons of mass destruction--now constitutes a serious threat to Russia's neighbors and the West. Extortion and other forms of corruption are rampant. It is now commonplace for Russian officials to charge up to $80,000 to register a bank, or to demand a 15 percent kickback on oil-export licenses. [End Page 36]

The military is also taking part in the crimefest. The Red Army's Western group of forces allegedly sold on the West European black market the Soviet military's strategic supply of fuel. Utilizing the Red Army's impressive airlift capability, Russian officers have flown European cars into Russia for subsequent sale. They illegally trade in MiG fighters, armored vehicles, and stolen German cars, and manufacture synthetic drugs in Russian military laboratories. ⁶

The criminal codes of Russia and the other former socialist states are ill-suited to a free-market context, and have proved nearly useless in countering the crime wave that has accompanied the move to a market economy. All buying and selling for profit, as well as dealing in securities or foreign currency, was until recently illegal. ⁷ Meanwhile, simple judicial tools, such as the legal concept of conspiracy to commit crime, or responsibility for membership in a criminal organization, have been lacking.

The Soviet-trained judiciary has virtually no understanding of the concept of private property, and no knowledge of how to settle disputes between private parties. Before 1992, there was only one state-run arbitration system in the entire Soviet Union. Since everything "belonged to the state," nobody cared whether contracts were honored or damages incurred. Parties to conflicts and their counsel had no personal or business interest in the outcome of the proceedings.

The collapse of communism resulted in the breakdown of the criminal-justice system and an eruption of violent crime, including murders, rapes, and kidnappings. The inability of the civil courts to adapt to the new economic reality or to enforce their own rulings was disastrous for the nascent business class. Unable to rely on official channels, Russian entrepreneurs were forced to "privatize" justice by hiring hoodlums to collect their debts and provide protection from other mobsters.

Dangers at Home and Abroad

The explosion of crime and corruption in Russia and other post-Soviet states poses a serious danger to democratic reforms. Threats to personal security and property, widespread prostitution, worsening drug trafficking, and unchecked bureaucratic graft all tend to increase the appeal of a "strong hand" at the political helm. Both communist and ultranationalist politicians have sought to exploit this sentiment. In his 1993 election campaign, Vladimir Zhirinovsky promised to wipe out crime within three months by arresting half a million people. He called for the mass execution of ten thousand mobsters. Before more sophisticated audiences, he called for a "condominium" with organized crime, whereby gangsters would receive unofficial permission to run drug-trafficking and prostitution rings, while leaving "legitimate" [End Page 37] businesses alone. ⁸ Such simplistic formulas could gain widespread support from a desperate Russian populace. Moreover, a future regime could use the rise in crime and corruption as an excuse to weaken the private sector and reverse progress toward greater protection of individual rights.

The economic toll of the crimefest is as serious as its political cost. The creation of markets in Russia has not been accompanied by the development of mechanisms for protecting consumers, and law enforcement is lax. As a result, ordinary citizens are being defrauded of hundreds of millions of dollars. When a company called Independent Oil Concern stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in deposits and transferred the money abroad, the Russian state procurator's office did not even bother to investigate. ⁹ Pyramid schemes like the notorious MMM are shamelessly advertised on prime-time national television. Such frauds not only purloin billions of hard-earned rubles, but discredit the very idea of capital markets. ¹⁰ Shares of fly-by-night companies, such as Tele-Market, are sold by mobsters in numerous retail shops around Russia with the full cooperation of the police, who profit from wild stock-market speculation. Cashing in these shares at artificially inflated stock-market prices is, in many cases, impossible. ¹¹ Despite the fall of communist ideology, many Russians increasingly view business as "dirty." Uncontrolled crime and corruption are preventing honest and industrious people from becoming entrepreneurs, thus weakening the long-term prospects of the Russian economy.

Development of the rule of law is a key element of democratic reform. Yet precious little has been achieved on this front in Russia. Police typically take hours to respond to a call about a severely beaten or mugged foreigner; if the victim is Russian, they often do not respond at all. Judges' rulings frequently go unenforced. Companies get little protection from the police, who are often in league with the mob. Occasionally, an honest law officer is brutally murdered to settle scores and to set an example.

Western businesspeople are increasingly harassed by Russian mobsters. Some American managers in Moscow regularly receive anonymous phone calls from people inquiring about the sales volume of their businesses. Americans, Germans, and Finns have been murdered, robbed, and severely beaten. Security costs, including expenditures for physical protection, life insurance for executives, and the guarding of cargo--and, in many cases, payoffs to the mobsters--can consume up to 30 percent of a company's profits. As a result, many foreign [End Page 38] businesses refuse to invest in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The end of centralized control over the military since 1991 has opened up the hair-raising possibility of unauthorized sales of nuclear components and materials. Uranium-production facilities are scattered throughout the former Soviet Union. Factories are located in Ukraine as well as in unstable areas such as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. Unguarded stocks of nuclear components lie in research facilities throughout the former Soviet Union. Moreover, former Soviet nuclear scientists are currently working in Algeria, Korea, India, China, Iraq, Iran, and Libya. ¹²

There is clear evidence that uranium and plutonium, the fissionable components of nuclear weapons, can be purchased if the price is right. ¹³ Over a hundred smugglers have already been arrested, although several have died or become severely ill from mishandling the materials, which are sometimes left in railway stations and airports. A particular pattern has been established: Russian KGB and military officers supply the materials, and then Italian mafiosi resell them to buyers in the Middle East. Transshipments have been made in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Sweden. But the direct route is even easier: across the Black or Caspian Sea to Iran, Iraq, or Libya.

An example of this new brand of nuclear trader is former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Shaaban Hafez Shaaban, who is currently based in Moscow. Shaaban, who calls himself "the head of the Palestinian government in exile," recently boasted in a newspaper interview that he had purchased two "surplus" neutron bombs formerly belonging to the USSR and hidden one in the Jordanian desert and the other in southern Lebanon. He declared that these weapons will eventually be used in attacks on Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. ¹⁴

Operatives of the Russian mafiya landed in the United States in the 1970s. Since then it has made a name for itself in gasoline-tax and medical-insurance fraud in New York and California. It has cooperated with the Sicilian mob in the international transport of heroin, and with Colombian cartels in shipping cocaine. One metric ton of cocaine was recently seized in St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport en route to Antwerp. While not yet as powerful as the Colombians, the Chinese Triads, or La Cosa Nostra, the Russians are an up-and-coming force in the increasingly globalized world of crime. ¹⁵

Indeed, the Russian mafiya's international activities are mushrooming. Russian business newspapers often carry advertisements for second citizenship in Belize or real estate in Florida or on the French Riviera. Ads for the sale of offshore banks and "shell" companies are also commonplace. Buying real estate, casinos, and industrial enterprises in Russia has become a safe way for the Sicilian Mafia to "wash" billions of dollars obtained from their Colombian customers. Russian mobsters [End Page 39] working with top-flight international attorneys in Frankfurt and Zurich have perfected the technique of laundering Colombian and Sicilian cash. Shuffled electronically through a host of "straw" companies, these funds often find their way into respectable investment portfolios or are reinvested as legitimate Western money in the emerging markets of the East.

Opium poppies and hemp (cannabis) have grown naturally in Eurasia for millennia. With the collapse of strict police controls, drug cultivation in Eurasia has reached an all-time high. Organized crime controls three million acres of opium poppies in Central Asia, mostly in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The authorities face daunting odds. For those police officers who are not on the take, there is no fuel or spare parts for the aircraft that were once used to control these areas. Porous borders allow the drugs to make their way from Central Asia all the way to Western Europe.

Azeris, Georgians, and Turkic-speaking Central Asians play an important intermediary role between the drug manufacturers of Asia--especially Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan--and West European markets. Uzbek and Tajik groups from Afghanistan have close connections in the Central Asian governments. The Central Asians, in turn, are plugged into the power structure in Moscow. Russia has become more than just a transit point for heroin from the Golden Triangle of the Far East (the Burma-Thailand-China border region). The Russian mafiya has established footholds in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok, where it cooperates with the Chinese Triads. Moreover, Russian gangs in New York work with the Gambino crime family to ship heroin into the United States.

In the summer of 1994, President Boris Yeltsin announced yet another anticrime campaign, this one prompted by the murders of a Duma deputy and several prominent bankers, as well as escalating violence against Russia's leading entrepreneurs. It was the seventh such campaign to be announced since he took office in 1991. The centerpiece of this drive was Presidential Decree 1226, dated 14 June 1994 and entitled, "On Urgent Measures to Protect the Population Against Gangsterism and Other Manifestations of Organized Crime." The decree granted increased powers to police and prosecutors, allowing them to conduct arrests and searches of premises and vehicles without court orders or the presence of witnesses. It also allowed the incarceration of citizens for up to 30 days without formal charges. Moreover, it permitted the seizure of the financial records and business correspondence of any company or individual "connected" to anyone suspected of being involved in organized criminal activity within the previous five years. The FSK (former KGB) and police were given free rein to search for and seize "financial and business secrets." Finally, in the best tradition of Stalin's NKVD, the decree stipulated that the secret [End Page 40] testimony of government informants, whose identity would be concealed from the accused and their defense, would be admissible as evidence. ¹⁶

Decree 1226 violated several basic individual liberties proclaimed in the new Russian Constitution of December 1993. Many politicians had few qualms about the illegal order. ¹⁷ But not everyone cheered. Veteran Russian freedom fighter and presidential human rights commissioner Sergei A. Kovalev declared: "The Decree not only clashes with legal procedures and current legislation. It contradicts the Constitution, in precisely that part for which an especially involved procedure for instituting changes has been put forward." ¹⁸ By promulgating the decree, President Yeltsin clearly encroached on the parliamentary right to alter the criminal code, and abrogated constitutional procedures and liberties. On 23 June 1994, the Duma voted overwhelmingly to suspend the decree, citing eight violations of the Constitution and individual rights, but President Yeltsin refused to withdraw it.

The decree failed to address the root causes of crime and corruption in Russia--inadequate legislation, an omnipotent and greedy bureaucracy, and subverted law-and-order organs. Consequently, it has been ineffective in deterring criminals. Mafiya bosses, warned in advance, lay low. Street thugs picked up in highly publicized police raids were subsequently released. Russia is still in the grip of the worst crime wave since the "Time of Troubles" in the early seventeenth century. The people and government of Russia, with the help of the West, must take immediate action to pull Russia back from the edge of the abyss.

Stemming the Criminal Tide

If the Russian president and the State Duma are to rekindle enthusiasm for the reform process, they must take concrete steps to stem the criminal tide. Several changes are warranted in the area of law enforcement. First, the Russian government should create a new anticorruption organization. Crime and security experts have suggested that it would be more effective to recruit new, well-paid, highly motivated specialists to staff such an organization than to sift through existing personnel. Currently, the offices of the MVD (Interior Ministry) and the FSK are penetrated by mob informants, who have consistently leaked highly sensitive information to the mafiya.

Russian law-enforcement authorities should go after the "fat cats." They should be allowed to pursue all politicians and bureaucrats involved in criminal activities, regardless of rank. So far, no one of high rank has been prosecuted for corruption or involvement with the mob. If the Russian people are to believe in their democratically elected government, some highly visible cases involving previously "untouchable" public figures must go to trial.

Russia's criminal code must be amended to define such concepts as [End Page 41] "organized crime," "criminal organization," "corruption," and "criminal enterprise." Legislative bodies in the post-Soviet states should introduce the conflict-of-interest doctrine into local administrative law. Legislators should pass ethics codes applicable to all public servants. The office of the prosecutor-general and regional prosecutors should be allowed to indict mob leaders--whose identities, as a rule, are well known. Such action can be taken without violating constitutionally guaranteed individual rights.

Reform of the judiciary is a crucial task. Soviet-era judges do not have the training or legal knowledge to deal successfully with markets and property rights. All judges must become thoroughly familiar with both criminal and civil law. For the tide to turn, however, new judges must be recruited and intensively trained, particularly in study programs conducted abroad. Older magistrates can be relegated to technical positions: they can be made registrars, traffic-court adjudicators, and so on. The civil courts must be upgraded so that they can handle private-sector disputes, obviating the need for Russians to resort to the mafiya. The state also needs to create a marshals' service to enforce court orders and rulings.

Changes must also be made in the military and nuclear fields. Security, inventory management, and accountability at nuclear production and storage facilities must all be upgraded. Russian law-enforcement services need to identify potential Russian and Eurasian middlemen and intercept them. Anyone attempting to purloin nuclear material should be prosecuted. Russia, Ukraine, and other states must also cooperate with Western governments in order to identify and intercept potential clients who attempt to purchase nuclear items, especially those from "rogue" states such as Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and Syria.

Economic policy should also be targeted. Bureaucratic regulation of the economy must be curbed. By selling illegal export licenses, business permits, and subsidized credits, bureaucrats have become the richest members of postcommunist societies. In tackling this omnipotent bureaucracy, the political leadership would not only liberate the entrepreneur and consumer but also strengthen the economy. The recent announcement by President Yeltsin that he will cut his staff by one-third and eliminate departments that duplicate the efforts of the Russian government is a welcome step in this direction.

A great deal could be accomplished by cooperating with West and Central European governments. One promising project is the development of a shared computer data system, involving the FBI, the German police, Scotland Yard, the Italian anti-Mafia force, and Central European, Russian, and Eurasian police forces. Western participants in any such endeavor should bear in mind, however, that the police forces of Eastern Europe, especially those of the former Soviet Union, have been penetrated by mob informants. Intelligence that has the potential [End Page 42] to endanger or compromise Western sources should not yet be shared. Still, the FBI's cooperative experiences with Italian agencies have shown that credible, reliable law-enforcement officers exist even in corruption-riddled agencies. ¹⁹ Reliable law-enforcement personnel in Russia and other former Soviet republics should be sought out and entrusted with cooperative operations.

Russia and the states of East Central Europe should receive Western help in developing comprehensive criminal, procedural, and administrative laws. Such assistance should focus on the conceptualization and drafting of laws regarding organized crime and corruption, ethics codes for civil servants, and administrative law. Moreover, judges and prosecutors should receive training in how to handle actual cases of organized crime.

The Central European and Eurasian countries should cooperate to develop and implement a witness-relocation program. Such programs have proven to be very effective in prosecuting mafiosi in the United States and Italy, and Russia has already asked for assistance in formulating its own program. Moreover, the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), a highly successful program to train police officers, should receive additional funding sufficient to extend it to all of Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

The greatest security threat posed to the West by the postcommunist crime wave is trafficking in nuclear materials and narcotics. The FBI, the CIA, and other intelligence-gathering organizations must join forces to track and penetrate the criminal structures involved in these activities. Airborne and satellite reconnaissance can be used to locate drug production sites, and pressure should be brought to bear on the host governments to destroy these crops. Efforts to track and intercept tainted money flows to and from Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia should be stepped up, and the criminals arrested.

In short, the societies of postcommunist Eurasia now face a major threat from the fusion of a ruthless post-Soviet mafiya--a highly capable and influential cadre of former party members and KGB officials--and a group of new and greedy entrepreneurs. Throughout the region, organized crime has penetrated the private sector, discrediting markets, undermining democratic institutions, and impeding Western investment. These developments could trigger a communist or ultranationalist backlash in Russia as well as in other key states of the region.

Moreover, the West is directly threatened by emerging Russian and Eurasian criminal organizations as they enter global alliances with the [End Page 43] Sicilian and American Mafia, the Cali drug cartel, and other crime syndicates. These organizations are already armed with sophisticated conventional arms, and they may have access to weapons of mass destruction as well. Unchecked, this new "criminal international" could become as dangerous as its predecessor, the creation of Lenin and Trotsky. It is imperative that the post-Soviet states and the West join forces to stamp out this hydra before it grows too powerful to control.

Ariel Cohen is Henry Salvatori Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. He has published widely on U.S.-Russian relations and democratization in the former Soviet Union, and is the author of Russian Imperialism: Development and Decline (forthcoming). James E. Smith, research assistant at the Heritage Foundation, contributed to this essay.

Notes

1. "Ministerstvo vorov v zakone" (Ministry of thieves-in-law), Izvestiya, 20 July 1994, 5. Owing to the nature of the subject, information about organized crime and corruption is difficult to obtain and often impossible to verify. I have, however, taken care to consult and cite only reputable sources.

2. Russian government sources, quoted in the Intercon Daily Report on Russia (Washington, D.C.), 17 June 1994, 1.

3. Andrey Konstantinov, "Kto takiye nayemnye killery, i kak oni voyu'ut protiv naroda" (Who are killers for hire, and how do they fight the people?), Komsomolskaya pravda, 19 July 1994, 1-2.

4. Peter Grinenko (former head of the New York City Detective Bureau's Russian department), interview by Dmitry Radyshevsky, Moscow News, 1-7 July 1994, 12.

5. Claire Sterling, Thieves' World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), esp. chs. 4 and 5.

6. Dmitrii Kholodov, "I sluzhba tam pokazhetsia medom" (And your service there will look like honey), Moskovskii komsomolets, 30 June 1994, 1.

7. During the last three decades of Soviet rule, dozens of people in Russia were executed for simple hard-currency exchange operations or for stealing "socialist property." Hundreds more received Gulag terms of 10 to 15 years. At the same time, many murderers and other violent criminals got away with relatively short prison terms of four to seven years.

8. Just as alarming is the appearance of "political" sporting organizations such as Russia's Sportsmen, formed by recently assassinated criminal boss Otari Kvantishvili. In addition to providing security and collection services to private businesses, such organizations exert pressure on politicians and influence political life. Parallels between these sports clubs and the Sportverein in Germany, which played an important role in Hitler's rise to power, are all too apparent.

9. Yaroslav Shimov, "Rossiyskogo grazhdanina obmanut' legko, a nakzat' obmanshchika trudno" (The Russian citizen is easily defrauded, but it is difficult to punish a crook), Izvestiya, 19 July 1994, 1.

10. In a brilliant public-relations coup, the owner of MMM, Sergei Mavrodi, got himself elected to the State Duma, replacing a Duma deputy who was killed gangland-style after becoming involved in a dispute with a mafiya boss in his precinct. Vladimir Zhirinovsky reportedly supported Mavrodi's election.

11. Sergei Blagodarov, "Byki' navodiyat v tsentre Moskvy svoj poriadok" ("Bulls" install their own order in the center of Moscow), Komsomolskaya pravda, 26 July 1994, 1.

12. Ukraine, with its diverse nuclear establishment, was a major source of nuclear-related dual-use materials, including heavy water, zirconium, and hafnium. These materials are all on the "restricted list" of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an international organization devoted to stopping the proliferation of such nuclear-weapon components. See William C. Potter, "Nuclear Exports from the Former Soviet Union: What's New, What's True," Arms Control Today, January-February 1993, 3, 6-10.

13. Leonid Fituni (president of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Center for Global and Strategic Studies), quoted in Sterling, Thieves' World, 211.

14. Valery Vyzhutovich, "Brat po sud'be, tovarishch po oruzhyu" (Brother by fate, comrade in arms), Izvestiya, 25 May 1994, 5.

15. According to James Moody, criminal-investigations bureau chief of the FBI's organized-crime department, the Russians are more sophisticated, more global in their outlook, and better educated than any other criminal group operating in the United States (presentation at the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce Annual Convention, Vail, Colorado, July 1994).

16. Yuri Feofanov, "Chrezvyschayniye mery po bor'be s prestupnostyu mogut obernut'sia proizvolom vlastey" (Emergency measures to fight criminality can turn into tyranny of the regime), Izvestiya, 16 June 1994, 1-2.

17. Sergei Stepashin, head of the FSK (successor to the domestic KGB), stated baldly that he is unconcerned about the plight of innocent victims in the battle against crime. Moreover, he supports the violation of human rights when the human being in question is a criminal. Natalya Gevorkian, "Attention: The President's Decree Works," Moscow News, 1-7 July 1994, 2.

18. Sergei Kovalev, "Punitive Bodies Given the Green Light," Moscow News, 1-7 July 1994, 1-2.

19. Moody, Russian-American Chamber of Commerce presentation.

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