Russia takes underworld to new level (with Jewish Mafiya)

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

A bit dated but still the scams continue...
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Russia takes underworld to new level

By BILL THOMAS

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

Not long ago there was only one Mafia to worry about. But lately guys with names like "Guido" and "Joey" have been muscled off the most-wanted list by other guys with names like "Vitaly" and "Slava." Russian mobsters, as Robert I. Friedman shows in his timely new book, Red Mafiya, aren't just copying their Italian counterparts. In many ways, they're taking professional crime to a whole new level.

Consider violence. When the Italian mobsters get mad at somebody, it's usually just the offending party who pays the price. Get on the wrong side of the Russians, reports Friedman, and they'll wipe out your whole family. And that's not the only way the two crime groups differ. In key profit centers, such as bank fraud, Russians are scoring record gains, but it's in the global arena where they're really beating the competition.

Being international in outlook gives Russian mobsters an advantage in drug sales, money laundering and the illegal trade of military equipment. And being mostly Jewish gives them a safe haven in Israel where many Russian Mafia types are citizens and thus immune from extradition to the United States when the feds get after them.

As they did during Soviet times, crime and government function more or less as one in post-communist Russia. Today, though, the same thing may be happening in Israel, which, Friedman claims, is close to becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian crime syndicates. "With two decades of unimpeded growth the Russian Mafiya has succeeded in turning Israel into its very own "mini-state,' in which it operates with virtual impunity," he writes. Warns one international law enforcement official quoted by Friedman: "Israel is going to have to do something. They could lose their whole country. The mob is bigger threat than the Arabs."

First arriving in this country some 25 years ago as part of the mass exodus of Soviet Jews, Russian criminals soon established themselves in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn; from there ex-convicts early released from Soviet jails were soon plying their trade in Denver, Miami and Los Angeles, making big money in extortion, a favorite target being NHL hockey stars from the former Soviet Union.

For thieves, who got their training in the Soviet black market, America was easy pickings. Friedman blames politics for the initially weak response from authorities. The law enforcement effort in New York and elsewhere, he writes, "came under criticism from the Jewish establishment, which complained that adverse publicity generated in the hunt for Russian Jewish criminals would foster anti-Semitism and jeopardize the continued emigration of Russian Jews to Israel and the West."

Much of Red Mafiya reads like a good crime novel, and Friedman's dead-on profiles of the major thugs are sometimes as comic as they are scary. Take Ludwig "Tarzan" Fainberg, the former proprietor of Porky's, a strip club in Miami, and a bad guy so bold he once tried to buy a Soviet-era submarine for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escabar.

"In Russia dishonesty is a trait that's bred in the womb," Tarzan tells Friedman. "Deprivation teaches Russians to be cunning predators -- it's the only way to survive. Americans, on the other hand, are trusting souls."

How much has the crime world changed? After a brief stay in federal prison, Tarzan now resides full time in Israel, where he's planning to get rich all over again by importing Russian prostitutes to Cuba.

Bill Thomas is a Washington journalist and author, whose books include Red Tape: Adventure Capitalism in the New Russia.

http://www.sptimes.com/News/071600/Pers ... rwor.shtml