Russian spies 'running protection rackets'
ni...@esperanto.nu
Subject: Russian spies 'running protection rackets'
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 07:38:41 +0300
The Independent
18 November 1998
Russian spies 'running protection rackets'
By Phil Reeves in Moscow
RUSSIA'S SECRET service, successor to the KGB, is being used to carry out
assassinations, seize hostages and extort money from big business, agents
have claimed.
In an extraordinary public appearance, Federal Security Bureau (FSB)
officers said the agency was being used "to settle accounts with undesirable
persons, to carry out private political and criminal orders for a fee, and
sometimes simply as an instrument to earn money".
The men, several wearing reflective sunglasses and one clad in a black
balaclava, unveiled their allegations at a press conference in Moscow,
plunging the agency into one of its more serious, and mysterious,
post-Soviet scandals.
"Our aim is to draw public attention to the deviations in the work of the
Federal Security Bureau that are exceedingly dangerous for society and which
have become features of its activities," they said in a statement.
"We do not want the shadow of the criminal actions of a number of
officials to be cast on the service and its honest officers." The statement
was signed by two colonels, two majors and a senior lieutenant.
Security officers publicly attacking their bosses is unheard-of in
post-Soviet Russia, and immediately dominated television news headlines,
casting a shadow over the meeting in Moscow between President Boris Yeltsin
and the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder.
In recent years, reports have regularly linked organised crime and the
FSB, which has suffered from low morale, poor pay and a brain drain,
following the break-up of the far larger KGB. Thousands of ex-KGB agents
have taken paid jobs in the shady world of Russian business and banking.
Some media reports have linked FSB elements with contract killings,
bombings and hostage-taking. But this is the first time that officers,
apparently from the heart of the security system, have so openly spelt out
allegations of top level corruption.
They acknowledged that they risked reprisals. "We were told, 'we will
first boot you out of the service and then stifle you like pups'," said
Lt-Col Alexander Litvinenko.
The most dramatic revelation has been the men's claim that a senior FSB
officer ordered the colonel to kill Boris Berezovsky, one of Russia's top
business and media magnates, who played a leading role in releasing two
British hostages in September. Lt-Col Litvinenko, Mr Berezovsky's former
bodyguard, claimed he did not carry out the order, which he received last
December, because he regarded it as illegal.
The colonel said as a result he was assaulted, received death threats and
was threatened with prosecution. In May, media reports accused him and his
colleagues of being involved in murders, assaults, torture and extortion.
Lt-Col Litvinenko claimed one FSB officer also accused him of "preventing
patriots from the motherland from killing a Jew who robbed half his
country". Mr Berezovsky has Jewish roots, an issue that has acquired
significance because of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Russia.
Another officer, Major Andrei Ponkin, yesterday claimed that in late 1977
the FSB leadership planned to kidnap the brother of a prominent Moscow
businessman, Umar Dzhebrailov, Hussein, then take him to a country house.
"In case of resistance ... we were ordered to kill the policemen who guarded
him and then kill him, as one of the options," he said. The order was never
carried out.
The agents argue that these were not isolated incidents. "The order to
assassinate ... Berezovsky, unfortunately, is not an exceptional event in
the present life of the FSB," said their statement.
The director of the Federal Security Bureau, Vladimir Putin, has
confirmed that Russia's chief military prosecutor's office is investigating
the Berezovsky case. But he has also threatened to sue accusers if their
claims prove groundless.
The officers have stressed the director is not their target and the
agency's problems began under his predecessor, General Nikolai Kovalyov.
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