Robert Friedman's book is the first to describe in detail the Russian mobsters who have established criminal enterprises throughout the world. His prose sometimes makes it sound like a sequel to Pulp Fiction. A Russian killer in Brooklyn murders a boy, he writes, "by picking him up like a ragdoll with one hand and plunging a knife into his heart with the other." But more than any other reporter he reveals how sophisticated, ruthless, rich, and multinational Russian criminals have become.
Among other things, he writes, they have arranged the sale of military helicopters and a submarine for the Colombia drug barons, and they have acquired influence over the American National Hockey League by threatening players from Eastern Europe and Russia and extorting money from them. They have infiltrated the international financial system, rigging share prices and buying banks in Hungary, Israel, and California. Now they are expanding into Nigeria, South Africa, and Australia.
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(Yawn) I guess they'll have to kill me, now that I've outed the scheme. Gosh, I'm so scared (snore). Not to worry. I've notified Scotland Yard, Interpol, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the DOJ, CIA, FBI, state, local and county law enforcement----and I named names.........just in case lurkers are taking notes (smirk).
Before Red Mafiya ... before Pulp Fiction ... there was ... and we are happy to present to you...
Red Heat (1988)Red Heat is a 1988 buddy cop film directed by Walter Hill. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, as Moscow narc Ivan Danko, and James Belushi, as Chicago detective Art Ridžić. Finding themselves on the same case, Danko and Ridžić work as partners to catch a cunning and deadly Soviet Georgian drug kingpin, Viktor Rostavili (Ed O'Ross), who also happens to be the killer of Danko's previous partner back in Soviet Russia. .....
On a serious note, the Soviet Union's original security agency Cheka and its numerous offsprings like GRU , GPU , NKVD/KGB and Spetsnaz were known for sponsoring and fostering similar self-financing loose cells inside and outside of Soviet block.
One of the early famous spectacular successes of Soviet counter-intelligence work was a long-running sting operation known as Operation Trust which snared many counter-revolutionaries, their exiled / expats financiers and foreign spies, including British agent Sidney Reilly, aka Ace of Spies (a prototype for Ian Fleming's James Bond).
There is a Polish movie (with English subtitles) which is well worth watching, about some GRU activities (specifically in Europe) Aquarium / Akwarium (1996), based on the book Inside the Aquarium by/about Vladimir Surokov, a sentenced to death in absentia defector from GRU to Britain. "Aquarium" is the code name for GRU HQ.