# Russian Organized Crime **Russian organized crime** — the post-Soviet networks descended from the *vory v zakone* ("thieves in law") — matters to this vault for two reasons: Western prosecutors have documented its entanglement with the Russian state, and several of its figures intersect directly with Trump-world real estate and events. ## "A virtual mafia state" In a February 2010 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, later published by WikiLeaks, Spanish anti-mafia prosecutor José Grinda described Russia as a "virtual mafia state" and said the FSB and military intelligence effectively controlled organized crime there. See [[Mafia State]]. ## The Tambov case in Spain Members of the Tambov gang began moving to Spain in 1996. Tambov chief Gennady Petrov was detained in Spain in 2008 and 2010, allowed to travel to Russia in 2012, and never returned. On May 29, 2015 prosecutors Grinda and Carrau filed a 488-page petition naming 27 people, including Duma deputy Vladislav Reznik; in May 2016 Spain issued warrants for 12 Russians, including Reznik and General Nikolai Aulov. ## Semion Mogilevich [[Semyon Mogilevich]] was tied to the YBM Magnex fraud — a company valued at about $1 billion before an FBI raid in May 1998 — and was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list from October 2009 to December 2015. U.S. cables link him to the gas intermediary RosUkrEnergo, co-owned by [[Dmytro Firtash]]. The FBI says he lives freely in Moscow. In his January 2011 speech on the organized-crime threat, FBI Director [[Robert Mueller]] named the Mogilevich Organization as one of two Eurasian targets of new FBI Threat Focus Cells and called the alliance of "organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders" — "so-called "iron triangles"" — "a significant national security threat" (see [[Iron Triangle]]). ## Tokhtakhunov and Trump Tower Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, charged in the U.S. over the 2002 Olympic figure-skating fix, was indicted in April 2013 in a case over an illegal gambling and money-laundering ring run partly out of Trump Tower unit 63A; co-defendants Vadim Trincher and Anatoly Golubchik each received five years, and art dealer Hillel Nahmad pleaded guilty. Seven months later, in November 2013, Tokhtakhunov attended the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow as a VIP, walking the red carpet minutes from Trump, according to Mother Jones *[single-sourced]*. See [[Crocus Group]]. ## RWKB angle The "mafia state" frame binds security services, officials and criminal networks into one system — and the Trump Tower and Miss Universe threads show that system touching Trump-world directly. ## See Also - [[Mafia State]] - [[Semyon Mogilevich]] - [[Felix Sater]]