Vyacheslav Ivankov
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Vyacheslav Ivankov (Russian: Вячеслав Иваньков) is a Russian criminal and notorious member of the Russian Mafia who was believed to have connections with Russian state intelligence organizations and their organized crime partners [1] He has operated in both the Soviet Union and the United States. His nickname, "Yaponchik" (Япончик) means "little Japanese" in Russian, due to his vaguely Asian features.
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[edit] Early life
Ivankov was born in 1940 in the state of Georgia to ethnically Russian parents, at the time part of the Soviet Union and grew up in Moscow. He was an amateur wrestler in his youth and served his first prison time for his participation in a bar fight, in which he claimed he was defending the honor of a woman. After his release he began to move up in the criminal world, selling goods on the black market.
Later Ivankov became involved in gang activity. His gang used forged police documents to enter houses and then burgle them. In 1982 authorities had finally caught up with him and he was arrested on firearms, forgery and drug-trafficking charges. Though he was sentenced to fourteen years he was released in 1991, reportedly thanks to the intervention of a powerful politician and a bribed judge of the Russian supreme court. It was during these years of imprisonment that he was initiated as a vor v zakone.
[edit] Moving to the United States
Ivankov arrived in the United States in March 1992, despite having served a prison sentence of around ten years and a reputation as one of the fiercest criminals in Russia. He had arrived on a regular business visa stating that he would be working in the film industry. His reason for arriving in America was not initially clear. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs advised the FBI that Ivankov had come to "manage and control ROC [Russian Organized Crime] activities in this country", advice that the FBI took on board. However Alexander Grant, editor for the paper Novoye Russkoye Slovo said in 1994 Ivankov had left Russia because it was too dangerous for him there, since there are "new criminal entrepreneurs who don't respect the likes of Yaponchik." and that he was not criminally active in the United States. [1] These sources are wrong however, since it became apparent that Ivankov was indeed criminally active in the United States. The actual scope of his activities is open for debate however, since conflicting sources describe his gang on Brighton Beach as around 100 members strong and being the "premier Russian crime group in Brooklyn" to something on the scale Lucky Luciano's nationwide Mafia Commission many decades earlier. However there is no evidence to suggest that he systematically used violence or corruption or attempted to establish a monopoly on any criminal enterprise.
Ivankov was arrested by the FBI in June 1995, charged with the extortion of several million dollars from an investment advisory firm run by two Russian businessmen, and in June the next year was convicted along with two co-defendants. This causes further debate whether he was a big-time crime boss, since usually the criminal masterminds at the top are insulated from direct criminal activity by several layers. Furthermore, it was alleged that a murder of one of the victim's fathers in Moscow was used as part of the threat, yet in tapped phone conversations Ivankov seems to be ignorant of such an event.
During interviews in prison, Ivankov accused the FBI of inventing the myth of the Russian mafia in order to prove the usefulness of their Russian division. He also stated that Russia "is one uninterrupted criminal swamp", the main criminals being the Kremlin and the Duma and that anybody who thinks he is the leader of the so-called Russian Mafia is foolish.
[edit] Return back to Russia
On July 13th 2004 Ivankov was deported back to Russia to face murder charges over two Turkish nationals who were shot in a Moscow restaurant following a heated argument in 1992. A third was seriously wounded in the alleged incident. The jury found him not guilty and he was acquitted the same day on July 18th 2005. The witnesses, a police officer among them, claimed to have never have seen him in their lives.
Larisa Kislinskaya, a leading crime journalist with the tabloid Sovershenno Sekretno, thinks Ivankov would remain a relevant figure, if only because of his position as a thief-in-law with the criminal leaders who remain in prison. "Prison life is still run by the thieves' law," Kislinskaya said. "They may not have to respect him while they are free, but if they ever land in prison, they had better respect him. As long as there is a prison system, Ivankov will be an authority."
[edit] Notes
- ^ The Chekist Takeover of the Russian State, Anderson, Julie (2006), International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, 19:2, 237 - 288.
