While films telling about Russian mafia were being shot and Russian businessman Mikhailov was being kept behind bars in Switzerland and some Russian citizens were buying up the gambling business in Spain, Great Britain remained a quiet place. Russian mafia did not make any shooting there, as the London City was chosen by the criminal as the place for financial laundering. It wouldn't be correct saying that British did not know what they were dealing with. And yet there is no ground to say they managed to invent the adequate response.
Several agencies were engaged in struggle with mafia in Great Britain in the mid-90's: those were several structures in the police, including the National Criminal Intelligence Service, and Scotland Yard. Besides, there was D7 in the counter-intelligence service, dedicated to organized crime. And the MI6 intelligence service organized the Drug Division in the late 80's.
The reason for participation by special services in the struggle with mafia was rather clear. After the cold war was over and the truce happened about the Irish Republican Army the special services needed to find new ways of being applied. It's then that MI6 invented a specific field of activities like aid given to Columbian government in its fighting against local drug barons. Similar way was followed by MI5 that tried to deal with a new threat posed by Chechen criminal groups activities. However, in 1993 they missed the murder of two Chechen brothers – Ruslan and Nazarbek Guziev – one of which was the informer for MI5. That failure aggravated relations between the police and the counter-intelligence service.
After 11/9 MI6 was allowed to deal only with Columbia and MI5 also was reduced its activities.
I arranged a meeting with an operative officer from MI5 in one of the expensive London hotels where I was brought in a roundabout way so that I cannot remember it.
A: We must secure the national safety for Great Britain. I promise that I shall not tell anyone about this meeting as it may be misinterpreted.
Q: Well, I'm a journalist and I'm not interested in these games. I only would like to know how you struggle with Russian organized crime today.
A: We are not engaged in that any longer.
Q: But you are responsible for the national safety, and this is part of the problem. At least till recently you have had a special department for struggle with organized crime.
A: Yes, we had some period in the mid-90's when it became clear that the Irish terrorism was going down, and so it was decided to get to deal with organized crime. However, several years ago MI5 was redirected to terrorism. And at the time being significant resources of MI5 are spent on counter-intelligence from Russia, as the level of espionage by Russia was recognized to be inadmissible.
Q: Is it that the number of spies has increased in the Russian embassy?
A: The problem is not that now there are more spies in the embassy. The problem is that this number is not getting reduced. As for organized crime, that's not our business anymore.
Such a statement is quite explicable. In 2006 the British government formed a new special service inside Home Office, that's the Serious Organized Crime Agency, or SOCA. It was made on the basis of several police divisions and was set a task of struggle with mafia, including the Russian one.
New low enforcement agency
However, SOCA failed to get to Russian organized crime. The new agency proved unlucky from the beginning. First of all, all other agencies shifted the cases on organized crime to it. That resulted in SOCA overloaded with work and practically paralyzed up to 2007. Easy quitting the mafia topic by MI5 caused a real backstage war between the two services. SOCA lacked people and it enticed many MI5 officers giving them higher salaries.
Probably, enticing was successful also due to the fact general director of SOCA, Stephen Lander, had headed MI5 before that appointment. Besides, after terrorist acts of 2005 the staff of MI5 was made two times as large, and our sources say that half of employees there have experience of no more than 18 months. As a result, MI5 developed a grey-green problem, i.e. lack of middle experienced workers, which contributed to worsening relations with SOCA. The leaks from hurt MI5 employees came down to press accusing SOCA of non-professionalism.
The operative officer from MI5, whom I met, confirmed to me that a couple of years ago a task was set again to the counter-intelligence service to apply resources for struggle with the Russian espionage. There was even hope that it might result in bettering SOCA-MI5 relations, as both services dealt with Russians. However, this has not happened so far.
Though, the problem of difficult relations between parallel services is only part of explanation why SOCA is not engaged practically with Russian mafia at the time being.
SOCA is something between a police structure and a special service. Our sources say that today intelligence service officers prevail there and the key role in that was played by Stephen Lander who possesses a clear thinking ability of a special service officer.
Probably, this is why the agency refused to give an official interview to a Novaya Gazeta correspondent and I had to use unofficial sources. According to them, today SOCA prefers collecting the intelligence without passing the case to the trial, as their sources get compromise there. It's exactly the low number of the passed to the court cases that is the main point of accusation at the SOCA's address in May this year.
Besides, today there is no department in SOCA responsible for Russian mafia exactly. This was confirmed to me by Stewart Hedley, the spokesperson of the agency. Unofficial sources also say there are no people in SOCA to be able to work with Russian diaspora. There are specialists for "Russian question", but all of them came from MI5 and they were invited personally by Mr. Lander and now hold posts in the leadership. There are no field agents with experience of working in Russian-speaking environment. There are some employees sent to work to Russia and Belarus. However, cooperation with Russian law enforcement bodies is practically reduced to zero.
It's been for long that a figure of one employee was the key for the cooperation mentioned. He managed to establish good contacts with Russian interior ministry and organize a celebrated case of the recent years: the arrest of three Russian hackers Ivan Maksakov, Alexander Petrov and Denis Stepanov. The guys had been blackmailing nine British and Irish bookmaker offices and casinos (their loss was about 2,000,000 pounds of sterling) with the use of a simple scheme. A bookmaker office working online during big sports events would receive an e-mail message saying "at the moment we are attacking your site. If you don't want your company to get ruined, you have to pay $40,000". Then a DoS attack began and the company's site received requests from hundreds of addresses simultaneously which caused the server going out of order and the company could not function for a while. After an exampling attack a new message arrived requiring money transfer to be done through Western Union to bank accounts in Riga. In October 2006 all the three hackers got sentenced for 8 years.
The British officer who supervised the investigation from the British side is suspended at the moment. In its turn, Russian interior ministry does not show much willingness for cooperation after Litvinenko's case. As a result, the above mentioned operation about Russian hackers remains the only success of joint working.
Finally, when SOCA was made to get to deal with investigations, and not only collecting information, Stephen Lander decided to concentrate on struggle with the drugs (about 60% of the agency's resource) and check over migrants.
At the same time, the agency made an attempt to convince the society it does not forget about Russian mafia. As a result of such a strange symbiosis of ideas, the SOCA leadership made a statement affirming that the agency's employees played the key role in arresting in London the leader of a "Russian" drug-dealing group, who was extradited to New York in February 2008. The point was about Ricardo Rotmann, aka Ricardo Fancini. He is considered to be the leader of an organized criminal group engaged in transporting the cocaine in Europe. Fancini was really famous in the 90's. He produced Kremlyovskaya vodka and had relations with Vyacheslav Ivankov and Umar Jabrailov. Incidentally, there is no intelligence that arrest of Fancini was assisted by Russian police.
However, the problem is that drugs is not exactly the kind of business Russian mafia prefers to deal with in London. It's reluctance in recognizing this fact of which Interpol has accused the SOCA leadership recently.
Specialization of "Russian mafia"
According to Misha Glenny, a British expert and journalist, the author of the hot-published book titled "McMafia. A journey through the global criminal underworld", there is strict specialization with the ethnic groups in Britain. The Turkish dominate traditionally in the heroin market, but they depend on Kurds and Albanians who are responsible for delivery. Albanians also control the brothels that were started in hundreds in the mid-90's. They also deal with slave trade from the Black Africa and Southern Europe. Vietnamese penetrated the market of transportation of marijuana from British Columbia to Great Britain. As for Russians, who were initially engaged in the racket, they left this business for more highly organized one – that's money laundering and crimes in the hi-tech sphere (stealing with the use of hackers), also trade in weapons.
Probably, the reason is that Russian mafia came to Britain following its own business. Money laundering being its main task, Iceland and London City were used for that. The City was convenient because the new Labourits had created especially favorable conditions for attraction means into economy of London.
According to our sources, a few parallel investigations are going on in SOCA related to laundering where one may see a "Russian" trace. But the result is expected to be achieved no earlier than two years.
All the British experts, whom I managed to talk with about this ticklish topic, agree that there is no political decision at present to persecute Russian groups for laundering, as it might undermine the City's reputation as the world financial capital.
Besides, there is no pressure from the society. A very specific situation has appeared in the British media: British papers are afraid of making big investigations regarding Russian oligarchs or small and medium sized firms, lawyers and specialists engaged in organizing schemes for money laundering.
The action by Grigory Luchansky against Times in 2001 was a tough lesson. Mr. Luchansky was barred from entry to Great Britain but that did not prevent him from gaining the suit about published by Times information that darkened his reputation. The newspaper called him to be a leader of a criminal group that laundered money through Bank of New York and was engaged in contraband of nuclear materials.
After several other lawsuits gained by Boris Berezovsky, the investigative divisions of many British newspapers took confidential decision to leave Russians alone. There is only one sphere regarding our oligarchs available for investigations by British press – that's sex and private life. This is traditionally given to the press and any court would take the paper's side in any lawsuit. The British colleagues told me this is why when Roman Abramovich was caught meeting with Darya Zhukova he had to arrange promptly his matters with his wife. His lawyers knew for sure that the press wouldn't be defeated in the court about this sphere.
So, there seems to have been several circumstances coinciding. Shifting the British special services from organized crime to terrorism and counter-espionage, fatal decision by Her Majesty to send not a police structure but intelligence service for struggling with mafia, and this service is more interested in getting information than catching the real culprits. Even the fact of suspending of the only officer who cooperated effectively with Russian interior ministry was to the Russian mafia's favor. Besides, the British press was disarmed with the recent-years practice of judicial practice. And the government is interested least of all in making pressure on the criminal part of the Russian London. So it appears that nothing may threaten Russian mafia in Great Britain at the moment.
London — Moscow / Published in Novaya Gazeta
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