While economies wobbled from Chisinau to Vladivostok, men described as the Godfathers of ex-Soviet organized crime flew to Odessa on Sept. 5 for a mob convention. But they were not alone.
By the end of the day Ukrainian police had detained 109 men whom police said represent the elite of the Commonwealth of Independent States’ criminal establishment.
Some 49 possess the underworld title of ‘thief in law,’ denoting leadership of a major organized crime clan, police said.
However, police expected that all but two of the 109 detainees would be released by the end of the week.
Although the men snagged in the dragnet were mainly ethnic Russians, they arrived from all over the world: Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Moscow, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Moldova, the Caucuses and 30 Ukrainian regions, according to Ukrainian media reports.
A new law requiring all foreign visitors to Ukrainian border regions, including seaports such as Odessa, to obtain special permits, gave the authorities the legal basis to hold non-Ukrainian citizens. Eighteen were fined Hr 20,000 ($7,800) for entering Ukraine illegally.
Law enforcers here had known of the conference for at least a month, the newspaper Den reported.
Arrests were made at Odessa International Airport, the city train station, and according to one newspaper report, at the resort itself while mob bosses sat down to a lavish feast.
Black berets from the elite Berkut and Sokol militia units took suspects into custody without incident.
Among those arrested was Stanislav Konyagin, the alleged leader of the Crimean ‘Bashmak’ criminal group, who is wanted by police on suspiscion of murder, the newspaper Fakty reported. He was one of the two supects police did not plan to release.
Confiscated weaponry included six pump-action shot guns, an SKS carbine, a Browning pistol and 250 rounds of ammunition. Some of the alleged conventioneers were fined for illegal possession of weapons.
Traffic police placed 28 vehicles, mostly Mercedes and BMW sedans, into holding areas. In most cases the vehicles will be returned to owners, law enforcers conceded.
The SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service, organized the sting. Members of the Odessa Regional Police also participated in the operation.
Although participants arrived from three continents and at least eight countries, Interpol was not informed by Ukrainian law enforcers of the impending conference. Interpol agents did not participate in the raid.
The bosses had intended to meet at the House of Writers’ Conference Hall and resort in the countryside north of Odessa.
Carving up and redefining spheres of interest among the mobs, made more critical in the wake of the Russian financial crisis, was to be the primary focus of the meeting, police said.
Development of cross-border money-laundering and narcotics trafficking, both Russian organized crime growth industries, were also to be discussed.
The bosses had chosen Odessa as the conference venue as a convenient site to better organize grain and oil exports from the region, Den’ newspaper reported.
The Black Sea port city’s importance as a trade and financial center had led to a long-running feud between local politicians and the Kuchma administration. Kyiv apparently won the fight last August 23 when staunch Kuchma supporter Ruslan Bodelan became Odessa’s new mayor.
Behind the scenes the fight for Odessa cash cows continues, business and police sources told the Post. Senior Odessa politicians are often accused of having close links with organised crime.
Over the last year Odessa has seen a string of killings linked with violent disputes over control of the city’s gasoline retail, oil processing, crude oil transfer, freight handling, and consumer goods import and wholesale businesses.
On September 2 a key officer in one of Odessa’s criminal bands, the clan led by a man known as ‘Angel’, was killed by two shots to the heart an Odessa police source said.
Police took into custody two alleged hit men associated with the Stoyanov organized crime group, the sources said.
