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Tuesday, 11.09.2007
Petersburg Godfather Kumarin now in a Moscow prison
St. Petersburg. For many years, he was regarded as the Godfather of Petersburg. Now Vladimir Barsukov has been detained and brought to Moscow for questioning. He is accused of extortion and of having ordering a contract killing.
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On Friday, August 7th, the state prosecutor general announced it would press charges against Barsukov (previous name Kumarin) on grounds of creating a criminal organisation, large-scale fraud and money laundering.
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Usually such charges are brought against so-called “raiders” who seize control over companies using a mixture of legal and violent methods.
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The last stand of the Tambov mafia?
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Between July 2005 and June 2006, Barsukov’s group is alleged in 13 cases to have seized control over companies with a total value of 145 million euros. They include two department stores, an oil terminal, a hotel, a champagne cellar, and some smaller firms.
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Barsukov-Kumarin was regarded in the 1990s as the chief of the so-called Tambov mafia group, which played a major, perhaps leading role in Petersburg’s criminal underworld. He lost an arm as a result of an assassination attempt.
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Anyone who survived the mafia vendettas of those years with their loot intact soon switched to formally legal business. As did Barsukov - who took to suing for libel anyone who dared call him a mafia godfather.
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In Petersburg, as a result, he was usually euphemistically referred to as an "authoritative" businessman. Barsukov, however, fought shy of publicity when it came to revealing how he had earned his money. He preferred simply to feature as patron of charities or the Orthodox Church.
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Chaika vs. the Godfather of Petersburg
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State Prosecutor General Yury Chaika was the first who dared to call Kumarin a "bandit before whom everyone cowered."
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On the other hand, Chaika had previously seemed to declare a complex case for solved prematurely in the case of the Politkovskaya murder.
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A Rolls Royce riddled with bullets
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Barsukov was arrested on August 22nd in connection with a different crime - one that bears indisputable mafia hallmarks: In May, 2006, in the centre of Petersburg, an armour-plated Rolls-Royce Phantom belonging to the entrepreneur Sergei Vassilyev came under fire from two hired killers. Vassilyev, who controlled an oil terminal in Petersburg and also had a shady past, was badly injured in the attack. His bodyguard died.
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Apparently, state prosecutors have evidence or witnesses pointing to Barsukov as being behind the slaying. The victim himself accused him after the attack of having organized it due to a business dispute.
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Arrest like a scene from a movie
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Barsukov' arrest in his villa outside Petersburg was reminiscent of an action movie: Because Moscow investigators feared Barsukov had his informers among their colleagues in Petersburg, two planes flew a police battalion of 300 men at night from Moscow to Petersburg.
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Due to the scale and the secrecy, many took the columns of trucks rolling through the city at night to be an huge anti-terror operation. Together with Barsukov, 76 persons were arrested, and 33 detained. 30 companies and apartments were searched. Barsukov was transferred to the Lefortovo detention centre in Moscow.
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Lawyer: Evidence is nothing more than a house of cards
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Barsukov's lawyer claims the evidence in both cases is extremely weak: "The charges are like a house of cards," says lawyer Sergey Afanassyev.
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The charges of violent corporate raiding are even weaker, in Afanassyev's opinion: "Charges already pressed against two persons were fixed on Barsukov as being the person in command, and that was that". The lawyer claims that there is no case to answer. Barsukov's arrested colleagues are sure to hold their silence about their boss, writes the Petersburg Internet publication fontanka.ru.
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Afanassyev now pins his hopes on a fair trial - "as long as it is not the Basmanny court," he says, referring to the court that controversially sentenced ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
(ld/.rufo/St. Petersburg)
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