On June 5, the funeral of Konstantin Yakovlev took place at the Northern Cemetery of St. Petersburg, the coffin with whose body had been delivered from Moscow the day before. The funeral service was held at the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Surprisingly, in front of the entrance to the monastery there was no noticeable accumulation of prestigious cars, as well as police officers. Although a lot of people came to say goodbye to Kostya-Grave. Long before the start of the funeral service, representatives of various strata of society gathered in the courtyard in front of the temple - from young guys with a characteristic appearance to respectable men in dark suits, apparently businessmen. some were greeted, some were hugged. And the whole churchyard was cordoned off by young people who were carefully examining the crowd, most likely the guards. Among the recognizable people who came to say goodbye to Kostya-Mogila were: an authoritative businessman Vladimir Barsukov, a deputy of the Legislative Assembly Denis Volchek, the first vice-president of the National Security Academy Vladimir Kulibaba, and Vladimir Korolev, who was once called the "father of the funeral." In general, representatives of the funeral services were present quite a lot. And this is understandable - after all, the deceased worked with them for a long time. At the funeral, people were also noticed, similar to the thief in law Ded Khasan, other well-known personalities in certain circles, for example, Viking. They also talked about some "Kazans" who also participated in the ceremony. The presence of a significant number of representatives of the "Caucasian" diasporas was noticeable. Some even came from abroad to say goodbye to Kostya-Grave. According to the most conservative estimates, at least 300 people gathered in the Lavra. It is noteworthy that Konstantin Yakovlev was buried on the day of his name day, which also coincided with the Orthodox holiday of the Ascension of the Lord. similar handwriting At the moment, the only intelligible version that sheds any light on the murder of Konstantin Yakovlev is based on a very specific way of carrying out the crime. The killers riddled the car with the businessman, his girlfriend, the driver and the security guard, firing machine guns from a moving motorcycle. Such a cinematic-gangster way of committing a crime is extremely rare both in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. Professional killers prefer not to mess with motorcycles - after all, shooting from a machine gun on the move, even at close range, cannot guarantee a 100% result. Although it makes it possible to quickly escape from the crime scene. In recent years, only one crime has been committed in St. Petersburg in a similar way (except for the murder of one of the first "Tambov" Nikolai Gavrilenkov (Stepanych), which went down in the history of gangster St. Petersburg, which occurred in 1995). This happened on September 7, 1998 on the Pulkovo highway, near the house 13/1. A motorcycle with two riders caught up with a Zhiguli car, and one of the criminals opened fire on the car from a Scorpion-type machine gun from a distance of 2-3 meters. As a result of the attack, two of the three people in the car were injured. This episode was included in the criminal case connected with the murder in 1997 of Igor Trofimov, head of the stevedoring company Barbaletta. A group of people passed through it as defendants, including some Druzhinin and Dzhaparov, who, according to the testimony of the victims, were the same motorcyclists, and the shooter, according to them, was Druzhinin. However, in the trial that ended in February of this year, their guilt in committing crimes was not proven, and the entire group, including the aforementioned Druzhinin and Dzhaparov, were released. After the murder of Kostya-Mogila, St. Petersburg operatives suggested that the perpetrators of both crimes could be the same people. According to our information, this assumption is based not only on the very fact that the criminals used a motorcycle, but also on another coincidence: one of the shooters from the Pulkovskoye highway who escaped criminal prosecution was recently seen surrounded by one of the very famous and authoritative St. Petersburg businessmen, whose relationship with the late Konstantin Yakovlev were very tense ... But so far this is just a version, let's hope law enforcement officers will check it. And we will return to the beginning of the tragic story. Moscow, Obukh lane On Sunday, May 25, at about 5 pm, a dark green Nissan-Maxima car turned off Zemlyanoy Val into the narrow lane of Obukha, heading to Sovincenter. Konstantin Yakovlev and his girlfriend Marina Volina were in the back seat, a professional driver from Moscow Sergey Chikov was driving, and Yakovlev's security guard Denis Tsarev, an employee of the St. Petersburg security company Sirius-Fort, was driving to his right. In the alley near the building of the UN office, the road makes a sharp turn towards Vorontsov Pole, so Chikov slowed down. As soon as the car slowed down, a black motorcycle with two riders in helmets rolled down the ramp from the courtyard of the Institute of Nutrition, which is under reconstruction. The motorcycle caught up with the "Nissan", and suddenly its riders, snatching shortened Kalashnikov assault rifles, opened heavy fire on the car. According to bystanders, the picture of the crime was very similar to an episode from an American action film from the life of gangsters. But it wasn't a movie. Having riddled the car, the criminals threw machine guns with empty horns, and the motorcycle, picking up speed, rushed with a roar towards Podsosensky Lane. A passer-by, walking his dog on the side of the road, barely managed to bounce off a motorcycle rushing towards him ... When the police officers and the ambulance arrived, called by the policemen who were on duty at the UN office, everything was over: they removed the corpses of three men from the perforated car and bleeding woman in a state of shock. Marina Volina was saved by a miracle: at the moment when the shooting began, she managed to duck down. The plan to intercept Vulkan-5, which was immediately introduced in the Central District of Moscow, did not produce any results. The criminals, most likely, left the motorcycle somewhere and fled in a car that was waiting for them. Forensics only had to collect shell casings and pick up abandoned machine guns. Later, the examination established that these AKs did not "shine" anywhere - these barrels were not in the police databases. After establishing the identity of the dead, it became clear that the target of the killers was Konstantin Karolevich Yakovlev, an authoritative St. Petersburg businessman, known to many as Kostya-Mogila. We were immediately perplexed by the fact that Konstantin Yakovlev, a cautious man, always afraid of assassination attempts and constantly driving only in armored cars, accompanied by a bunch of guards, ended up in an ordinary foreign car with only one Denis Tsarev. Didn't want to "shine" in front of someone? Or have you lost your focus? An attempt to trace the owners of the car "Nissan-Maxima" did not lead to anything. Its owner, Dmitry Rakcheev, whom we contacted by phone, said that he sold the Nissan on an ad about three years ago by proxy with the right to resell. And who bought the car from him, Rakcheev did not remember. The conversation with the relatives of Marina Volina did not clarify anything either. Her sister said that Marina used to work in the hairdressing salon of the Astoria Hotel, and after meeting Konstantin Yakovlev, she left there. They were connected, according to the sister, by a serious relationship. For the past two years, Marina has accompanied Konstantin on his many trips. Since about 1998, Yakovlev was also often accompanied by Denis Tsarev, one of his permanent bodyguards. And in trains, and in planes... But all this does not point to the main thing - to a possible customer of the crime. Whose order? Neither law enforcement agencies, nor journalists, nor people who knew Konstantin Yakovlev well had a shortage of versions of the murder of Kostya-Mogila. Both St. Petersburg and Moscow newspapers vied with each other to circulate approximately the same versions. The first version is associated with the name of Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin), whom law enforcement agencies consider the leader of the so-called "Tambov business group." They recall the long-standing conflict between him and Konstantin Yakovlev, who allegedly tried to subdue a number of areas of profitable business controlled by Vladimir Sergeyevich. A conflict that could have escalated recently in connection with the recent elections to the Legislative Assembly, where both promoted their people. Which could lead to the order of the Bone-Grave. But this version does not stand up to scrutiny. Our sources believe that, whatever the conflicts between them in the past and in the present, Barsukov, as a legal, large businessman, would in no way spoil his image with such an order. And he doesn't need it either. Kostya-Mogila has long ceased to be the size it was in the 1990s. He posed no danger to anyone. Only the name remains. However, not everyone thinks so. After all, behind the personality of each shadow leader, there are not necessarily commercial structures in which he is the official founder. Perhaps no one knows for sure what was really behind the Kostya-Grave ... Another version is associated with the name of Artur Kzhizhevich, calling him the new "looking" for St. Petersburg from Moscow thieves. Judging by press reports, in addition to old grievances against each other, the conflict between him and Yakovlev was caused by the St. Petersburg seaport, allegedly controlled by Kostya-Mogila. Yakovlev was credited with organizing a dockers' strike and other actions to disrupt the plans for the redistribution of the port, behind which the figure of Kzhizhevich loomed. (At the same time, some of our sources generally believe that the role of Artur Kzhizhevich in the current shadow layout of the city is too exaggerated. And it is unlikely that he, who recently returned from Israel, had an interest in removing the Bone of the Grave.) As far as we know, when in June 2002 she had the place was an attempt to seize the building of the Society of Marine Pilots of St. Petersburg, people with a characteristic appearance called the name of Kostya-Mogila. According to available information, Konstantin Yakovlev did have a close relationship with the Maritime Port Authority (MAP). Our sources reported that they saw Kostya-Mogila more than once, who was resting on boats in the company of the port captain Mikhail Sinelnikov, who was killed on May 14 of this year. This, apparently, served as the basis for rumors that all port structures (up to the MAP) were unofficially controlled by Kostya-Mohyla. In this regard, the name of Boris Berezovsky was mentioned, to whom Konstantin Yakovlev allegedly addressed, trying to defend the Seaport. We think that some kind of control over the Seaport by Kostya-Mohyla is still a myth. After all, it is quite well known that the owners of the port are other people who are not connected with Yakovlev. If the interests of Berezovsky and Yakovlev allegedly coincided in the port, then Petersburg television became, according to rumors, the object of their division. The disgraced oligarch allegedly intended to create his own media holding in St. Petersburg, but the matter stalled on television, which Kostya-Mogila did not want to let out of his tacit control. Rumors circulated in the press that he was going to bankrupt television through his people at the Petersburg TV and Radio Company, in order to then buy it from the city administration with all the ensuing consequences. This allegedly became the reason for ordering Kostya-Grave from London. Another version is associated with the upcoming elections of the new governor of St. Petersburg. Many media outlets have already set their teeth on edge by attributing to Kostya-Mogila a connection with Vladimir Yakovlev (whom he allegedly financed the election campaign in 1996) and his wife, Irina Ivanovna. In addition, rumors were actively circulated that entire committees in the city administration were under the influence of Konstantin Yakovlev, especially the committee for economics and industrial policy, whose chairman Anatoly Aleksashin was a friend of Konstantin Karolevich. That is, "their" officials in the committees allegedly lobbied for the business interests of Kostya-Mogila. He also had his own people in the Legislative Assembly, first of all, deputy Denis Volchek, with whom Kostya-Mogila had been friends for a long time through their parents. Based on all this, a version arose that in the upcoming elections, Konstantin Yakovlev was going to push a person to the post of governor who absolutely did not suit a certain criminal group or business group. As a result - there was an order. This version, we believe, is absurd in itself. After all, it's not a secret for anyone that the real candidate for the post of the city's governor is the presidential envoy Valentina Matviyenko. Perhaps the first person to come under fire from the press in connection with the murder of Kostya-Mogila was his former business partner Vladimir Kulibaba, who is now vice president of the National Security Academy. They talked about some conflicts between him and Konstantin Yakovlev, allegedly aggravated in recent times. In fact, most likely, Kulibaba had no motive in eliminating the Bone-Grave. Both of them have been in business for a long time. And with the death of Konstantin Yakovlev, nothing changed for Vladimir Kulibaba. The investigation of any contract killing usually takes a long time. Given the identity of the victim and the fact that the crime was committed in the territory where, most likely, there were reasons for the incident, it can be assumed that officially this murder will never be revealed. Now it is more or less obvious that the execution of this crime is similar to the attempt on the life of businessman Vyacheslav Ivanov in the so-called "Barbaletta case" in 1998. Plus, unverified information about the possible connection of one of the Pulkovskoye Highway shooters who escaped criminal prosecution with one of Konstantin's current opponents Yakovleva: But this is not enough, very little... On the other hand, another thing is clear: with the murder of Kostya-Mogila, we have moved one step further from that troubled time, which now most reputable businessmen shyly call the stage of accumulation of initial capital. Direct speech "And I will ask them differently" (Transcript of a fragment of a conversation between Kostya Grave and a certain businessman Vova in February 1991. The essence of the conversation for Kostya-Grave was that businessman Vova began to pay for the "roof". The audio cassette accidentally ended up in at the disposal of AZHUR and aroused natural interest.) "... I know that no one will really solve this issue. If someone could solve it, then I would come up. Everyone in the city knows me, thank God. The issue is unsolvable, not because who is cooler, but because in this situation you were wrong. After all, the fact of the matter is that if some kind of gopota ran over, frivolous people, then the conversation would be different. That's all. And here it already turns out on a different level: either you need to somehow cover it up, or somehow justify it ... No matter who you turn to, you can't justify it. Well, I can meet them, bl... blah, put up your fighters, blah ... blah, fuck ... someone, blah ... But all the same, you will remain wrong, all the same, the specific situation will not be resolved. After all, you don't want them to be frightened, quiet, damn it, for two months. And then do your thing. Right? You need you to sit down with people at the table, or I sat down at the table, and then everyone would disperse and say: that's it, there are no complaints against each other. You can’t decide from a position of strength here... You see, Vova, I explain to you that if you had had any business with me before, you would immediately tell me that, they say, the conflict turned out. And I already answer. That is, they will already answer to me. That is, it turns out that they have already run into me. And I will ask them differently. And then it turns out that they ran into you, hung some money on you, and I got into an excuse. So, it's logical, if you put yourself in their place, damn, that I'll grab something from this. Why didn't they grab it? They worked, according to their concepts, bl...d. I didn’t do any work, I earn money, they don’t. And so any other team, who is for you, even from a position of strength ... After all, I could come and say: guys, go to hell ... All out ... you will get there! That is, by nature I will become a bespredrytsik. I'm losing my credibility in this regard... Well, what can you really offer me if you don't have that kind of money? You see, Vova, I take the whole blow. I'll have to fight... I'll come to the arrow and say: Volodya gave me money, as you asked. But you will x ... get them, because I think that you are wrong. All. All claims are against me. Agree? But for me alone, nah ..., it will be hard to withdraw. So, you need money for the lads right away. There are "Kazan", which means I will go to Moscow to the Frenchman. You won't come with bare hands either. .. - And how much does it cost to take under the roof? .. " Freestyle Biography Konstantin Karolevich Yakovlev was born on February 4, 1954 in Leningrad into a family of St. Petersburg intellectuals. Konstantin from childhood became interested in sports, went in for freestyle wrestling and quickly reached the level of a candidate for master of sports. After high school, he graduated from the Physics and Mechanics College, served military service in the sports company. With the beginning of "Gorbachev's" perestroika, Yakovlev began to engage in various activities, mostly in his native Moscow region. He became close friends with Pavel Kudryashov (Kudryash), who stood at the origins of gangster Petersburg, and later became his right hand. For several years (until 1988) Konstantin Yakovlev worked as a digger and installer of monuments at the Southern Cemetery. According to people who knew him well then, there was no question of any control over the cemetery by Yakovlev. (Law enforcement agencies think otherwise.) He only skillfully used his many connections and natural persuasion skills to solve the cemetery problems that arose. Then, in the late 1980s - early 1990s, Yakovlev formed his own team. They were mainly engaged in the so-called "protection" (this is evidenced by an audio cassette that accidentally came to us with a recording of the conversation between Kostya-Mogila). And to take a stable position in the then Petersburg, he was helped by acquaintance with many future authorities - immigrants from the Moscow region. According to our data, then, in the 1980s, one of the places of attraction for Konstantin Yakovlev was the Vneshposyltorg foreign exchange store on Makarov Embankment, where people gathered who made money on citizens who sold Vneshposyltorg checks. The option was a win-win; checks were not a currency, so it was impossible to bring the swindlers who bought them from Soviet foreign workers to criminal liability. The Pulkovo-2 airport was one of the many places where people from Kostya-Mogila's entourage gathered. Around 1990, a curious conversation between Yakovlev (already known in certain circles) and his comrades took place there. Kostya stood among them and talked about Moscow. He spoke about the fact that in the capital there are more opportunities to earn money, about the connections that he already has. “But why?” his interlocutors asked, “and there is a lot of everything here ...” this will come in handy later..." (An idea of ​​the manner of speaking and specific expressions is easy to get by reading the mentioned fragment of the audio recording. ) Thus began the "Moscow theme" of Kostya-Mogila. The aforementioned Seryozha-Tashkent, known in those years among Moscow swindlers, who had numerous influential acquaintances not only in the thieves' world, really helped him to establish contacts in the capital ... could. At certain moments, the head of the district, a rather far-sighted person, resorted to the help of Kostya-Mogila, who was able to resolve the conflict situation without resorting to bloody showdowns. In addition, as far as we know, Yakovlev more than once helped out Novoselov's son, Vasily, who, due to his adventurous inclinations in business, got into critical situations. One must think that Novoselov Sr. appreciated this help of the Grave, and the head of the district had plenty of opportunities to thank him. The beginning of Konstantin Yakovlev's entrepreneurial activity was marked by the first conflict with the Law. He was accused of extortion and ended up in Kresty. However, Yakovlev's lawyer managed to reclassify this article as Article 147 (fraud) of the old Criminal Code, and in January 1992 the Kirovsky District Court of St. Petersburg sentenced Kostya-Mogila to three years in prison (conditionally). Konstantin Yakovlev, who gravitated towards legal business, was one of the first city authorities who openly sat down at the tables in the offices of his firms. The office of Almaz OJSC, in which Kostya-Mogila was the commercial director, was located on Varshavskaya Street, where in 1993 the first attempt on his life took place. Killers, who said that they came from Pasha Kudryashov, Yakovlev, as expected, accepted immediately. Konstantin was saved by his lightning-fast reaction: when the criminal entered the office, grabbed a pistol and opened fire, Grave managed to fall to the floor, to the table ... Later, the investigation found out that the attempt was organized by Igor Savin (Kuvalda), one of Yakovlev's team, who stole a batch of vodka , hiding behind the name of the Grave, and thus deciding to evade responsibility. Looking ahead, let's say that there will be four more attempts to physically eliminate the Bone-Grave. Since about 1994, Konstantin Yakovlev began to appear in the company of legal businessmen of the city. He did not appear often, because both then and later he preferred to remain in the shadows. Without breaking his former ties with like-minded people, he nevertheless made it clear to everyone that he was not attracted to them. The interests of the entrepreneur Yakovlev spread to many areas of business, including even the media. One of his then business partners, judging by newspaper publications, was Sergei Lisovsky, who gave him a stake in the well-known Premier-SV agency, which had a fairly strong position on the St. Petersburg 5th television channel. Later, Yakovlev's position in regional television became even stronger: the symbolic post of president of the Television Development Fund gave him the opportunity, according to some reports, to indirectly participate in solving financial issues at the Peterburg TV and Radio Company. But in general, the influence of Kostya-Grave on television seems too exaggerated. As far as we know, at least he had no influence on information policy. He was mainly interested in advertising. In the mid-1990s, Kostya-Mogila, judging by newspaper publications, developed a very warm relationship with Ded Khasan, one of the most authoritative thieves in law in Russia. It was said that Hassan appeared in 1994 in St. Petersburg not by chance. He was allegedly invited from Moscow by Kostya-Mogila, so that other thieves in law, especially "crowned impostors", would no longer appear in the city. Be that as it may, the presence of Ded Khasan in the northern capital fully fit into the framework of the diplomatic concept of Kostya-Mogila - to get along peacefully with all the figures of the shadow Petersburg. Entrepreneurial activity of Konstantin Yakovlev developed more than successfully. Since 1991, together with partners, he has established a whole network of commercial enterprises of various kinds. We list only those in the creation of which Kostya-Mogila personally participated. These are the companies: "Driver" (1991), "Aris" (1992), "Sirius C", (1994), "BiT" and "Breeze" (both - 1995), "MSA Company" (1996 ), "Veles" and the publishing and advertising agency "RiM" (both - 1997), "Okhta Center" (1999) and the NP "St. Petersburg Regball Federation" (2001). Over time, according to some reports, Kostya-Mogila began to show interest in the food industries of the city, the pharmaceutical market, alcohol, automotive, media advertising and other types of business. At some stage, many people from his entourage began to show dissatisfaction with the fact that Kostya-Mogila wasted aimlessly the money they invested in the business. Rumors spread in the team that they believed the Grave out of habit, gave money, offered profitable projects, he agreed, took the money, and they ... disappeared. It ended with the fact that by 1997 most of the people who made Yakovlev influential and strong turned their backs on him. It was then that Konstantin Yakovlev tried to get into the oil business. He held partnership talks with the head of the BFIG Pavel Kapysh. The negotiations were successful: Pavel Grigoryevich, who preferred not to quarrel with such a person as Konstantin Yakovlev, proposed creating a joint commercial structure. This was done, but the matter did not go further than this. In the summer of 1999, Pavel Kapysh was killed. Kostya-Mogila was present at his funeral in the temple, holding on to the coffin and in every possible way emphasized his good attitude towards the late magnate. Shortly after the funeral, Yakovlev appeared in the office of Vitaly Ryuzin, who headed the BFPG. As far as we know, Konstantin Karolevich in a rather harsh form suggested that Ryuzin replace the entire security service of the company with his own people, and also that he, Kostya-Mogila, become the first person of the BFPG. In other words, it was about the notorious "roof". Vitaly Ryuzin asked Yakovlev to wait, not daring to agree or refuse. There were several other meetings with the same result. How Ryuzin managed to never fall under the control of the Bone-Grave is unknown. Nevertheless, rumors spread that Yakovlev nevertheless became one of the shadow owners of the BFI. The more successfully Yakovlev's business developed, the more they began to talk about his confrontation with Vladimir Kumarin, the head (according to law enforcement agencies) of the so-called "Tambov business group". This rivalry was even called the "criminal war", which peaked in late 1999 - early 2000. Within a short time, Georgy Pozdnyakov was killed and Vyacheslav Eneev was wounded - far from the last people in the Tambov team. The response move, in particular, was called the attempt to liquidate Kostya-Mogila by Novgorod killers, who were tied up in time by operatives of the then 15th department of the UUR. It was reported that Yakovlev was ordered by a certain Bob Kemerovsky, a man of Misha-Khokhl (a former deputy of the State Duma, with a different, of course, surname), once the second person in the "Tambov" hierarchy. However, whether all the mentioned persons were victims of this "war", we cannot say. In the end, they had plenty of enemies outside the framework of the conflict between Kumarin and Yakovlev. On October 20, 1999, Deputy of the Legislative Assembly Viktor Novoselov was killed. The direct perpetrator of the murder, Artur Gudkov, was arrested immediately. A little later, with the active participation of employees of the Agency for Journalistic Investigations, his partner, Alexander Malysh, was identified and detained, and a few months later other members of the criminal group - Andrey Chvanov and Mikhail Yegorov. (Last November, law enforcement agencies arrested Dmitry Chernyaev, who was hiding in Moldova, suspected of complicity in the murder of Novoselov.) It turned out that those arrested were members of a gang organized by a certain Oleg Tarasov, who is still on the wanted list. (Looking ahead, let's say that recently all of them were sentenced by the court to various terms of imprisonment. ) We did not accidentally focus on this criminal group. The fact is that her traces led to the already distant 1993, to the office of Almaz OJSC on Varshavskaya Street, in which a certain Abrosimov shot at Kostya-Mogila. And according to law enforcement agencies, he was driven there in a BMW, by the former police officer Alexandrov, who was hired for this purpose by Igor Savin (Kuvalda), who was killed just a couple of weeks after the events on Varshavskaya Street. Among the defendants in the criminal case initiated after the assassination attempt on Konstantin Yakovlev was Dmitry Skvortsov, who was called a friend of Abrosimov. Later, in court, it was not possible to prove his involvement in the commission of this crime. Be that as it may, among the employees of the Zerkalo OP, created in 1997, which, according to the investigation, served as a cover for the "Tarasov group", included Tarasov himself, Dmitry Skvortsov, and several other people who had contacts with Konstantin Yakovlev . ... In addition to the murder of Viktor Novoselov, members of the "Tarasov gang" were charged with a whole series of murders and attempts, including preparations for the murder of Vladimir Kumarin (Barsukov), the former vice-president of the St. Petersburg Fuel Company. Despite the fact that the last episode took place during a period of sharp disagreements between two reputable businessmen, it seems too primitive to attract Kostya-Mogila to this gang. After all, the order to eliminate such a person as Barsukov could come from anyone. As for Viktor Novoselov, the deceased was on excellent terms with both of them... On June 22, 2002, a meeting between Vladimir Barsukov and Konstantin Yakovlev took place at the Austeria restaurant. The meeting, which journalists called "historic", because it put an end to their confrontation and worked for a positive image of both authoritative businessmen. ... That same summer, a sensational story took place in the press, connected with the current deputy of the Legislative Assembly Denis Volchek, a business partner and close friend of Konstantin Yakovlev. In relation to Volchek, who was suspected of misappropriation of a painting belonging to the workshop of the great Rembrandt, a criminal case was opened. So, in fact, the point in that story was put by Yakovlev, who, in order to help out a friend, brought this picture and voluntarily handed it over to the investigation. His appearance in a chic white suit in one of the offices of the Investigation Department of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate on Zakharyevskaya Street looked like a well-directed performance. Konstantin Yakovlev smiled, joked, testified under the protocol, took all the blame for the episode with the picture on himself. As far as we know, Kostya-Mogila did not hide the fact that the painting was in the West and even exhibited at auctions. However, how Konstantin Karolevich (or one of his people) was able to quickly go abroad and bring Rembrandt, risking getting caught at customs with smuggling, remained unknown. In recent years, according to our sources, Konstantin Yakovlev's "business empire" has weakened even more. And he himself was no longer the same Kostya-Grave of the 1990s. He was engaged in business "intelligently", acquired a large library, spent a lot of time outside of St. Petersburg (most often in Moscow, as well as abroad), became, as they say, very religious. In general, opinions about the religiosity of Konstantin Yakovlev differ. Some believed that he fell into religion, so to speak, at the behest of the times and the word about Christianity for him is a kind of screen that many reputable businessmen like to use. Others, after talking with Konstantin and listening to his "Christian speeches, decided that he, as they say," went crazy. "And some came to the conclusion that Yakovlev really became a true believer. It is already impossible to say where the truth is. related sources believe that by the time of Yakovlev’s death, he no longer had a team: someone began to engage in his own business, someone went into politics and power, someone stereotypically continued to “work” with the methods of the 1990s. It was these latter who actively used the big name of Kostya-Mogila, who was considered almost the "shadow governor" of St. Petersburg.

The assassination in Moscow of the shadow leader of St. Petersburg, Konstantin Yakovlev, nicknamed Kostya Mogila, had a great resonance in the Northern capital. Moreover, this coincided with the stage of the change of power in the city - his namesake, the governor of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Yakovlev, has already announced his imminent resignation.

Millionaire

According to official information, Konstantin Yakovlev was the founder of CJSC Sirius-S, the company Bit, the trading company LLC Okhta Center, the telecommunications company MSA, and the publishing agency RiM. He owned real estate in the Petrograd and Central districts, in the Kurortnaya zone on the Karelian Isthmus, as well as a number of companies in Moscow. Konstantin Yakovlev controlled part of the food industry in St. Petersburg, including the alcohol market. After the murder of Pavel Kapysh in 1999 (the owner of the Baltic Financial and Industrial Group), Mohyla began to control part of his property. According to various estimates, the total fortune of the Grave is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He is also the president of the Television Development Fund and the International Association to Combat Drug Trafficking.

Among Yakovlev's business partners are Boris Berezovsky, Badri Patarkatsishvili. The grave, not without reason, was even considered a confidant of the disgraced oligarch in St. Petersburg, although Yakovlev himself never confirmed this information. One way or another, along with Vladimir Kumarin (Barsukov) and Mikhail Mirilashvili, Kostya Mogila was one of the shadow leaders of the city.

Yakovlev paid special attention to the media, including television. Many St. Petersburg television companies, advertising and publishing groups and magazines were somehow influenced by Yakovlev.

There is information in law enforcement agencies that Mogila was a "position" of Moscow thieves in law, who offered him the position of "watchman" in the city, which he managed to tactfully refuse.

Good reaction

Little is known about the conflicts of the Grave in St. Petersburg. Yakovlev was one of the first authorities who sought to legalize his activities as much as possible. At the same time, everyone notes the extreme accuracy and caution with which he conducted his affairs. Nevertheless, in 1993 they tried to kill the Grave for the first time. The killers came to him right in the office, but he was saved by a good reaction. As it turned out later, the killers were sent by one of Yakovlev's henchmen, Igor Kuvalda, who was killed a few months later.

In 2000, Konstantin Yakovlev and Vladimir Kumarin allegedly had serious claims against each other. Recall that for a long time the name of Kumarin was associated with the activities of the "Tambovskaya" organized criminal group in St. Petersburg, although this was not confirmed in court.

According to law enforcement, it is possible that these contradictions were the result of a series of murders that swept through the city. In particular, in 1999, Deputy of the Legislative Assembly Viktor Novoselov, who was close to the Tambovites, was killed. According to GAZETA, recently the city court of St. Petersburg passed a sentence on the perpetrators of this crime. However, the customers were never found. Among the people who benefited from this murder, Konstantin Yakovlev was also named.

However, the quarrel with Kumarin eventually ended with an amicable agreement concluded by the two authorities on June 2, 2000 on the territory of the Peter and Paul Fortress in the Austeria restaurant.

Stabilizer

The former head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate and deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, Arkady Kramarev, in a conversation with a Gazeta correspondent, denied the connection between the murder of Mogila and the upcoming gubernatorial elections: "Yakovlev was, of course, a well-known figure, was engaged in business and even a little politics, but I do not see any connection with the elections."

“In our time, Konstantin Yakovlev played the role of a stabilizer of the situation in certain circles in the city on the Neva,” says Yuri Loskutov, head of the St. Petersburg police department from 1995 to 1997. “So that there would be no shooting. However, it’s hard for me to say what could now be the reason for his murder.”

Petersburg trace is not seen in what happened and the current police officers. The St. Petersburg RUBOP doubts that the death of the Grave can be directly related to his business interests. “Nobody needs this. The grave was a system-forming person. To kill him is to destroy the existing order.” However, operatives noted in unofficial conversations, "Mohyla had a very big business with interests not only in St. Petersburg."

Who will be the successor of the Grave, time will tell.

Reference

Konstantin Yakovlev was born on February 4, 1954 in Leningrad into an intelligent family. Konstantin from childhood was seriously engaged in freestyle wrestling and reached the level of a candidate for master of sports. For some time he worked at the Southern Cemetery, where he received his gloomy nickname. In the early 1980s, Kostya Mogila worked as a money carrier for the shop workers. Finding his place in the criminal world of Peter Yakovlev was helped by his acquaintance with many authorities whom the Grave had known since childhood. In the early 1990s, Mohyla had problems with the Criminal Code. He was arrested on charges of extortion, but after spending 4 months in a pre-trial detention center, he was released. Many mistakenly called Grave a "thief in law", but, according to operational data, Grave was never "crowned". Since about 1995, Mogila has become practically a legal entrepreneur.

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Yesterday in St. Petersburg they buried the "authoritative" businessman Konstantin Yakovlev (Kostya Mogila), who was killed two weeks ago in Moscow. The funeral of the "authority" was delayed due to the celebration of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg and gathered a wide variety of people - from thieves in law and bandits to the monks of the Zelenetsky monastery, which Konstantin Yakovlev helped in recent years. With details - ANDREY Y-TSYGANOV.

From the very morning, the lads began to pull up to the Trinity Cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, where Konstantin Yakovlev was supposed to be buried. The place of the funeral was decided the day before - the relatives of Konstantin Yakovlev chose another temple, more modest, but then it was decided that everyone who wanted to say goodbye to Kostya Grave would not fit there. Indeed, there were many who wanted to. By half past twelve, the entire square in front of the entrance to the Lavra was crowded with jeeps and Mercedes with complicated numbers. And for ordinary mourners, the stewards prepared four buses.

A mahogany, carved coffin with the body of the deceased was placed in the middle of the temple. He was immediately surrounded by relatives, followed by citizens of characteristic appearance. Funeral wreaths with the inscriptions "Sister to brother", "From friends" appeared at the entrance to the cathedral. However, most of the "friends" remained on the street until the very beginning of the funeral, standing in a semicircle in front of the cathedral. The believers who came to the service on the occasion of the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, hastily left the territory of the Lavra. Even the beggars, who are usually located along the entire road from the entrance to the Lavra to the Trinity Cathedral, this time moved outside the gates of the monastery and gathered a generous harvest there. Journalists crowded at the entrance to the cathedral. The lads did not pay attention to the cameras, and only then, at the cemetery, a respectable citizen approached the Kommersant correspondents and recommended not to go on the rampage: they say, "you yourself understand, there are people here who may not like the shooting. People can react differently ".

There was no procession of the cross, usually performed on the Ascension. Instead, at noon, as planned, the funeral of the Bone of the Grave began. "There was a big boss, huh? - the grandmother asked me, collecting candle stubs. - God rest. The bosses are from God." According to the most conservative estimates, about 500 people came to say goodbye to Kostya Mogila. Among them were the "authority" Vyacheslav Slatin (Pasha Kudryash) and the deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Denis Volchek. By the end of the funeral, Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin), ex-vice-president of the St. Petersburg Fuel Company, who was once considered the main enemy of the deceased, appeared at the doors of the cathedral. He stood at the entrance until the end of the service.

As one of the participants in the funeral explained to a Kommersant correspondent, the audience gathered here was diverse: “There is a guy from Broiler’s team, that one is Malyshevsky. I haven’t seen some guys for 20 years. SOBR with OMON." The Kommersant correspondent did not recognize representatives of legal big business in the crowd of those saying goodbye (in the environment of Kostya Mogila, they said that he had long "come out of the shadows" and was a member of a number of prestigious business clubs. However, in the most famous of them, the St. Petersburg English Club, Kommersant was told that Konstantin Yakovlev had nothing to do with him).

The funeral cortege, surrounded by special escort vehicles of the traffic police, stretched for half a kilometer. But at the cemetery (Northern; not the most prestigious of St. Petersburg cemeteries - Konstantin Yakovlev's mother is simply buried there) only the closest gathered - 200 people. Deputy merchant Denis Volchek, whom rumor calls one of the main "successors" of the deceased, kept in rows, avoiding cameras. The lads did not speak over the coffin. The confessor of Konstantin Yakovlev, a monk of the Zelenetsky monastery, said: "The Lord called Konstantin at the best moment of his life, when he embarked on the path of repentance." And the president of the public organization "Academy of Spiritual Revival" founded by Yakovlev promised to tell "what kind of guy" the deceased was.

The “brothers” listened to speeches without enthusiasm: it is no secret that it was Konstantin Yakovlev’s religious and social activities that turned most of his “guardsmen” and “authorities” away from him. "The main thing now is who they (Moscow's thieves in law. - Kommersant) will appoint instead of him," one of the participants in the ceremony said, meaning that, despite the break with crime, Kostya Mogila remained "the godfather "St. Petersburg. (Kommersant, 06.06.2003)

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End Bone Grave

There were attempts on him five times - unsuccessfully.
In the sixth, the killers did not stint on cartridges.

INin the criminal world in the city on the Neva, he is revered almost like a "godfather". Moreover, not so long ago, this namesake of the governor was considered "looking" for the city, and this is the highest level in the territorial thieves' hierarchy.

That is why the murder of this man on Sunday, May 25 in Moscow is compared with the murders of such well-known criminal godfathers as Sergei Timofeev (Sylvester) and Otari Kvantrishvili.

Kostya Mogila, according to his passport Konstantin Karolevich Yakovlev, did not live a little over a year before his fiftieth birthday. He was born into a St. Petersburg intelligent family, his father was repressed as an enemy of the people and was released only in 1947. the boy was left to himself, or rather, the street on which he spent all his free time from school. Even then, he made acquaintance with many future authorities of his area.

Yakovlev made his initial capital in the funeral business. According to one version, it was while working in this field that he received the nickname Kostya Mogila. As a digger at the St. Petersburg Southern Cemetery, he boasted that no one would dig a grave so quickly and with high quality. His record - 43 minutes with a single shovel - has not yet been broken. a good athlete, at one time he worked part-time at studios as a stuntman, but then switched to a much more profitable job - as a courier he carried money from large workshops from Tbilisi and Sukhumi to Moscow and St. Petersburg, where they were placed on the accounts of nominees.

Kostya started his own business by becoming a co-owner of several restaurants near Vyborg and Zelenogorsk. And then he put together his brigade, where his childhood friend Pavel Kudryashov (Kudryash) became his partner. Kostya Mogila and his henchmen built their criminal career on racketeering. On this, he got burned, receiving a term. Since the conviction was the first, the sentence was not severe. From this episode, the future "godfather" concluded that henceforth he would act exclusively from behind the scenes, without taking a direct part in criminal actions.

He was one of the first among the criminal authorities who took the path of legalizing his business, made serious efforts to appear in the guise of a respectable business person. To a large extent, at this stage, he was helped by his acquaintance with Viktor Novoselov, first the head of the Moscow District Council of the city, and then a deputy and deputy head of the city Legislative Assembly. They had known Novoselov since childhood, they grew up in neighboring yards. Grave managed to subjugate most of the shops and stalls of the Moscow region, helped Novoselov become a co-founder of 15 companies registered in the region.

But the services that Kostya Mogila provided to the promising politician were not limited to this - there was every reason to believe that over time Novoselov would head the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, that is, along with the governor, he would become a key figure in the city. And the legislator's headache was the adventures of his son Vasily. Having taken up business with the support of his father, he demonstrated not only the complete absence of a commercial vein, but also a striking uncleanliness, more than once "throwning" his business partners. It so happened that these partners were the leaders of criminal gangs who put the unlucky entrepreneur "on the counter" when he cheated or did not pay them on time. Shielding the son of his friend and patron, Mogila sometimes paid off his obligations, sent his people to the “offended” partners of Vasily Novoselov in order to settle the brewing scandal. It was he who helped Novoselov Jr. pay off with another St. Petersburg criminal leader - Vladislav Kirpichev (Kirpich).

And then Novoselov was killed. The perpetrators of the attack were quickly identified, because one of the killers was wounded by Novoselov's guard and he was detained. A trial was recently held and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. But who is the customer? As paradoxical as it sounds, Kostya Mogila was named among those who could "order" Viktor Novoselov.

Meanwhile, his name was also mentioned in connection with the assassination of the president of the Baltic Financial and Industrial Group (BFIG) Pavel Kapysh, who is also the head of the Balt-trade fuel company. It was believed that Kapysh was a protege of another major St. Petersburg authority, Vladimir Kumarin, who is believed to be backed by the Tambov authorities, who have long firmly straddled the northern capital. The confrontation between the Graves and Kumarin (now he changed his surname and became Barsukov) sometimes turned into a real war. Georgy Pozdnyakov, the closest assistant and confidant of Kumarin, was shot dead. The same fate befell entrepreneurs with a criminal reputation Viktor Sloku and Jan Gurevsky. The murder of Kapysh is put in the same row.

It was known that the "fuel king" moves around the city in an armored Chevrolet jeep, followed by a Mercedes with security. The killers decided to use the Fly grenade launcher. But given the thick armor, for success, the grenade had to hit the side rack, at the junction of the armor sheets. To achieve such an accurate hit in a fast moving car is almost impossible. Therefore, as they said, with the active participation of the Grave, a complex scheme was conceived using traffic lights - automatic and manual.

There were several groups. One synchronized the work of traffic lights in the right way, the second cut off the Mercedes with fire, which, like the jeep in front, slowed down at a red traffic light, the third one hit Kapysh's parked car in the right place.

After his death, Yakovlev's partner Vitaly Ryuzin became the successor in the BFI and the Balt-trade fuel company.
By the way, the murder of the Grave itself in Moscow was just as thoughtfully organized. And before that, he was assassinated five times! But an enviable reaction, well-trained guards and simple human luck invariably saved. But Konstantin Karolevich has accumulated too many enemies, by the way, back in the mid-90s he was crowned with the rank of thief in law. However, this circumstance did not in the least embarrass many representatives of the Russian elite, who did not consider it shameful to communicate with the St. Petersburg "godfather".

For example, one of his media business partners was Sergey Lisovsky. And in his agency "Premier SV" Kostya Mogila even had his share. He did not hide his close contacts with Berezovsky and his right hand Patarkatsishvili. Among his good friends was the Yakovlev couple - his namesake Governor Vladimir Yakovlev and his wife Irina.

But let us return to the circumstances of the assassination attempt on Kostya Mogila, testifying to the thoroughness of its preparation. Let's start with how Konstantin Karolevich ended up in Moscow in the days when such significant anniversary celebrations are taking place in his hometown? It turns out that in Moscow he was passing through, heading to Germany, where he had business interests. But you can fly to Germany directly from St. Petersburg - therefore, he had some important meetings planned in Moscow. And anyway, why shouldn't he spend a few days in the Mother See, where he rents a luxurious apartment on Zemlyanoy Val in the neighborhood of Pugacheva and Kirkorov. He lived here not alone, but with his beloved, 30-year-old Marina Volina, with whom he began an affair two years ago in St. Petersburg.

Apparently, the killers were driving the Grave from St. Petersburg, and in Moscow they thoroughly studied his daily routine. They knew, in particular, that he had gotten into the habit of dining at the same restaurant at the World Trade Center on Krasnaya Presnya (Sovincenter). On that last day of his life, at 16.45 he went to the institution he had chosen. The Nissan Maxim was driven by 52-year-old Sergey Chirov, an experienced driver with great experience. Apparently, his criminal past was just as impressive. When the doctors, after the assassination attempt, undressed him for examination, they saw a torso blue from a tattoo - evidence of a walker to places not so remote. Grave himself and his girlfriend were in the back seat. The third passenger was, as follows from his documents, an assistant to the representative of the governor of Taimyr in the Federation Council, Denis Tsarev.

At 4:50 pm, a black foreign car with Grave and his companions taxied from Zemlyanoy Val to the narrow lane of Obukha. Here, near the building of the UN office and the mansion of the former Institute of Nutrition, the road makes a right angle. Killers on a motorcycle lurk on the ramp of the Institute of Nutrition. They obviously received information about the movement of the Nissan-Maxim by radio or mobile phone. When the driver of the Nissan braked before a sharp turn, a motorcycle with two riders rolled off the ramp, caught up with a foreign car, and his riders took out machine guns and opened heavy fire on the right side of the Nissan. Everyone in the car was doomed - the operatives then counted 33 shell casings at the crime scene. Marina Volina was saved from death by a chance - a moment before the shooting began, she bent down to tie her shoelace. And yet two bullets hit her, although the wounds were not fatal.

On Sunday afternoon at this hour there were almost no passers-by on the street, except for a local resident who was walking his dog. A woman who at 17.00 went out onto the balcony of her apartment on the 10th floor and watched the whole scene from above was also a witness to what was happening.

When such an iconic figure, an authority of such rank as Kostya Mogila, who also has extensive connections in power structures, is killed, it is clear that very influential forces are behind this crime. As already mentioned, Konstantin Karolevich had more than enough enemies and rivals. Last but not least, Kumarin (Kum) and the “Tambov” people identified with him ... However, a couple of years ago, a “historical” meeting between Kostya Mohyla and Kum took place, during which the parties seemed to agree, if not on peace, then, in any case about a truce. But it is known what the price of such “contracts” is. There were good reasons to settle accounts with Yakovlev and the notorious Shevchenko brothers.

One of them, Sergei, who was a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, was convicted of extortion, and he received a term of 7.5 years, however, thanks to high connections - conditionally. His brother Vyacheslav Shevchenko, an ex-deputy of the State Duma from the Liberal Democratic Party, was on the federal wanted list for a long time. In competent St. Petersburg circles, there was an opinion that Kostya Mogila used the brothers' difficulties to press their business. Finally, there is an opinion that some people from his own camp were interested in eliminating Yakovlev. In this regard, the name of Vladimir Kulibaba is called, who at one time was considered the right hand of the Grave, but recently it has been said that he cherishes the idea of ​​taking his place. Konstantin Karolevich did not have a relationship with the new “looking” in St. Petersburg from Moscow thieves Artur Kzhizhevich.

It is quite likely that Mogila therefore chose the path to Germany through Moscow in order to enlist support in the capital in his emerging deaf confrontation with St. Petersburg enemies. But he got ahead of himself...

Kostya Grave

His real name is Konstantin Karolevich Yakovlev, he was born on February 4, 1954 in Leningrad. His parents belonged to the old St. Petersburg intelligentsia, his father was once repressed as an enemy of the people and was released from the camp only in 1947. Later, Konstantin's father became the director of a major research institute of all-Union significance. Konstantin himself went in for sports since childhood - freestyle wrestling, in which he reached the level of a candidate for master of sports. Interestingly, Yakovlev's grandfather was a Russian officer, served before the revolution in the Cuirassier Regiment, and after the revolution became a preacher of the Church of the Evangelical Peasants. After school, Yakovlev graduated from the Physics and Mechanics College, then served in the army, in a sports company, and only after demobilization began to “spin”. At first, Kostya Mogila was a stuntman - together with his friend Evgeny Toporov and several other sports guys, they wandered around different studios of the Soviet Union as cobblers (Toporov was the closest friend of Konstantin, who later was very worried when Evgeny was killed in Sweden - in the early 90s ). In the early 80s, Kostya was known for working as a money carrier from large guild workers from Sukhumi and Tbilisi. He was entrusted with huge money at that time - he transported 600-700 thousand rubles from city to city. Then it was a very big risk, because the Zhiguli cost less than 10 thousand.

Gradually, Yakovlev began to spin on other topics, although he worked alone for a long time. He became close friends with Pavel Kudryashov, the one who stood at the origins of the "cap-makers" movement - it was Kudryashov who once threw the Azerbaijanis out of Sosnovaya Polyana. At that time, Kudryashov was a shareholder of Malyshev. Yakovlev and Kudryashov were very often identified and even said that they had a single team, but this was not true. It’s just that Grave and Pasha Kudryashov were connected by purely human and friendly relations. By the way, later, when Kudryashov was well “unwinded”, many people began to use his name, however, according to his own estimates, 90 percent of those who introduced myself to me had no real share. Its own team at the Grave was formed more or less only in 1989. To take a stable position in gangster Petersburg, Yakovlev was helped by the fact that he knew many future authorities almost from childhood - they were all spinning in the Moskovsky district, the native area of ​​\u200b\u200bMogila. Pavel Kudryashov even worked at one time in the Wind Rose, where Kumarin once started.

In the early 90s, Mohyla had some legal troubles, and he was even forced to spend some time at Kresty, from where, however, he was soon released. However, while he was in prison, fermentation began in his team - in particular, one of his people, a certain Igor Kuvalda (a former boxer) wanted more independence. His desire for separatism culminated in the attempt on Grave in 1993. Back then, Yakovlev had an office on Varshavskaya Street. By the way, he was one of the first authorities who officially settled in a normal office and thus indicated his inner desire for legalization and for “clean business”. When the killers entered the office on Varshavskaya, they, by the way, said that they had come from Pasha Kudryashov - they knew that Grave would react to this name and always accept it immediately. Yakovlev's life was saved by his good reaction - when the killer entered the office, took out the barrel and started shooting, Grave managed to fall behind the table, reached for the pump-action shotgun, but it turned out that it was lying in a different place, not where it usually is. The killer managed to mortally wound two people of the Grave, but then they still managed to detain him. Since then, the Grave has drawn the appropriate conclusions, strengthened its own security service and catches killers every six months.

Somewhere since 1994, Kostya Mogila began to appear more and more often in official places, in a society of legal entrepreneurs. Of course, he did not completely break with the lads, but he emphasized in every possible way that he was "not drawn to the dark gangster-criminal environment." Yakovlev's interests extended to the banking sector and the media. Sergey Lisovsky becomes one of his partners, and Kostya receives a share in the famous Premier SV agency, which, in turn, had very good positions on Channel Five (at that time, Bella Alekseevna Kurkova, a well-known democrat, was in charge of Channel Five, According to rumors, the people of Kostya Mogila once managed to pull out of the airport literally from under the noses of the killers). Subsequently, Yakovlev further strengthened his position in the field of regional television.

In the mid-1990s, Moscow thieves repeatedly offered Mogila the position of "watcher" of the city, and, according to rumors, even a coronation. However, he diplomatically refused, while managing not to offend the proposers. It is known that Grave has an extremely warm relationship with one of the most respected thieves in law in Russia - with Grandfather Hassan. By the way, it was rumored that Hassan was dragged to Peter by none other than the Grave. However, the diplomatic abilities of the Grave, which helped him to get along normally in gangster Petersburg with everyone, did not save him from the serious problems that arose in him in 1998 - the reasons for these problems will be discussed a little lower, but they really resulted in what they began to attribute to him directly related to the murder in 1997 of the vice-governor of St. Petersburg Manevich. Such a version was voiced in one of the newspapers of St. Petersburg, and in the city itself, in some places on the embankments and on the walls of houses, even inscriptions appeared: “Yakovlev, why did you kill Manevich?” At the same time, rumors about the involvement of the Grave in the death in 1995 of Vladislav Listyev began to heat up. All this created an extremely nervous atmosphere around Yakovlev. However, it is possible that the authors of the inscriptions “Yakovlev, why did you kill Manevich?” they were just glad to use the fact that the Grave is the namesake of the governor ...

The tendency of many leaders of gangster Petersburg to approach legal business (which, however, was also not flawless, because only a naive person could talk about absolutely “clean” business in Russia in the second half of the 90s. As one elderly man who had already seen a lot in his century businessman: “We have everything in Russia, so I won’t be surprised if it turns out that we have an honest business somewhere too”) contributed to closer contacts between representatives of the gangster and bureaucratic elite. Moreover, both of them were objectively interested in "compacting" these contacts. The most profitable type of business in Russia was not the trade in weapons, drugs or, say, gasoline, but the trade in power. An official who received a meager government salary could contribute to a high-level decision on some issue - and a certain commercial structure had a fabulous profit. But the same official could also slow down the solution of the issue, and instead of fat, continuous losses were obtained.

The stratum of officials who traded in "making decisions" (or, conversely, in not making them) was rapidly accumulating large sums of money. But, as you know, it’s not enough to “cut down” money, you still need to save it (in order to be able to use it later), it’s still desirable to invest it in some business (that is, legalize or launder - at least slightly, because the real one, as in West, the laundering of "dark" capital in Russia was not required). For the implementation of laundering and savings of ill-gotten capital, just the representatives of the gangster elite were well suited - at least those of them who had already realized the need to change their own image. The bandits (more precisely, some of their leaders), going towards the officials, solved not only the issues of strengthening their own social status and their own security (who dares to develop the closest connection of a big boss?), but also broke through to the most delicious, the biggest and “sweetest” pie, which was only found in the kitchen of Russian business - to the public sector ... By and large, real (as they say - "adult") organized crime in the city on the Neva arose precisely when gangster Petersburg entered into close working contact with corrupt. In the second half of the 1990s, this contact became so inseparable and obvious that many official officials have even ceased to be embarrassed by their compromising (as they would say before) ties. Apparently, the new time and new economic conditions have formed in the bureaucratic environment new views, those according to which, probably, it is not the presence of close contacts with bandits that can be compromised, but, on the contrary, the absence of such ties (and, consequently, the absence of the possibility of “solving issues” on , as some civil servants like to say, at an informal level).

With all this, is it any wonder that in 1997 the former deputy of the former mayor of St. Petersburg Sobchak, Lev Savenkov, was sentenced to several years in prison? As deputy mayor for trade, Savenkov was engaged in nothing less than smuggling, and not alone, but in a very worthy company.

The bond between bandits and officials in Russia was facilitated by the fact that even by 1998 the country had not yet developed a legal concept of what “corruption” is. Consequently, there was no need to talk about some kind of strategy and tactics for combating this phenomenon, which did not receive any legislative assessment. The article on bribery that was present in the Criminal Code made it possible to stop only a very narrow and, perhaps, the most primitive manifestation of corruption - serious people began to abandon the practice of accepting envelopes with money back in the first half of the 90s. After all, you can pay for services in a million other, much more beautiful ways ... In general, when a conversation about a bond between representatives of the lads and bureaucracy moves from general discussions to specifics, you have to be very careful, because the practical implementation of this same bond is an extremely delicate area, in which there is enough it is difficult to prove any malicious intent ... And yet, this conversation (even if unpleasant) must be carried on, one cannot turn a blind eye to facts that simply cannot but surprise - as, for example, the order issued in 1997 cannot but surprise , according to which a certain Oleg Semenovich Shuster was appointed as an adviser on a voluntary basis under the governor of the Leningrad Region - the same one that was already mentioned above in the subheading "The authority of the deputy's assistant". Ruslan Kolyak said so bluntly about him - “... one of those who can be ranked among the“ Tambov ”criminal community is a major businessman Oleg Shuster, who has something to do with APEC ...”

Of course, the regional governor may have his own reasons for choosing advisers. Perhaps Mr. Gustov simply wanted to surround himself with people not only smart and with business acumen, but also, as they say, seasoned, who know life in all its manifestations. Shuster is undoubtedly an experienced person ...

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From the book Newspaper Tomorrow 40 (1089 2014) author Tomorrow Newspaper

Saur-Mogila: people and bullets Ekaterina Glushik October 2, 2014 1 Politics War Society militia's story In Moscow, in the Church of the Holy Trinity of the Life-Giving on Sparrow Hills, an event took place that was followed by tens of millions of people around the world: three Novorossiysk couples,

From the book What suddenly author Timenchik Roman Davidovich

Kostya He was a native of the Mayakovsky Museum of the sixties. Then I heard about him for the first time. A friend who collaborated at the Museum enthusiastically reported on the company of young people who victoriously revealed the secrets of the biography of the title character of the Museum, and at the same time unlucky

From the book Paris from Caesar to Saint Louis. Sources and shores author Druon Maurice

Genevieve's grave And Genevieve managed to see how it all happened! The longevity of this ascetic prophetess was truly miraculous and increased reverence for her. Geneviève was still alive in 507, when Clovis and Clotilde, perhaps in gratitude for the victory,

From the book Russia in the fetters of lies author Vashchilin Nikolai Nikolaevich

Tomb of an Unknown Patient Minister of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Nikolai Anisimovich Shchelokov in 1983 was caught by the hand by Yuri Andropov stealing. Among other sins, such as paintings and antiques, the communist Shchelokov did not hesitate to write flowers from the ministry for the grave of an unknown