How Chechnyan immigrants support terrorists

While the law enforcement agencies were occupied after Beslan in finding out the the identity of the leader of the terrorists, "Komsomolka" began its own investigation.

And this was before the fingerprint experts declared that "The Colonel" could be no one else besides Ruslan Khuchbarova.

Our information disclosed that during the first Chechnyan war he fought on the guerilla side as a ordinary cut-throat. Later he settled in Orel for a few years.

Officially he did not work. Through just what means he lived, one can only guess. In 1998, during a fight between gangs, he shot two Armenians with a machinegun and left the city in a hurry. Even now Khuchbarov is on the federal most-wanted list.

We succeeded in finding out quite a lot about his background and even had an interview with his former live-in girlfriend (see KP issues from 11, 14, 16 September 2004). The main conclusion that we arrived at as we followed the Colonel's tracks: in the Orlov countryside, under the protection of high-ranking persons, there has operated - and probably continues to operate - a well-organized criminal group of Chechnyan immigrants who make money to send to their guerilla brethren for carrying out the war in Chechnya.

In the 1980s, while they were still brothers with the USSR, the Chechnyans came to the Orlovsk area to live and work. The settled entire villages and worked as farmers. They say that Shamil Basayev himself paved the roads in the Novosil'skiy region. After the disintegration of the nation, the proclamation of Iskeriya independance and rise to power of Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechnyans began working in a completely different field: they began to send meat, grain and money to Chechnya.

We at "Komsomolk" suceeded in acquainting ourselves with several of the criminal activities run by Chechnyans, through whose hands passed enormous sums during the time of reconstruction.

At the beginning of the 1990s there were financial documents called avisos, similar to today's money orders, which were printed by the Russian central bank. The sums which the bearer of these could acquire could not be carried in their hand, but made it possible to transfer money to any firm, or order any kind of merchandise. Validation systems did not exist at the time. And oh how the Chechnyans exploited this. They opened fake firms, counterfeited aviso forms, and came to Orel city in order to "laundry" their money through any one of the local firms. There was no shortage of those wanting to help: the Chechnyans always gave a good percentage for the transactions.

Here is but one episode from criminal case #294015: a certain Khasanbek Osmayev and Khumid Khunarikov offered the manager of the Orlov private firm "Irida" a cooperative deal with their firm "Merkuriy". The manager was to sign an order for the import of 22 Volvos, Nissans, and BMWs, then present a counterfit aviso in the sum of 46,700,000 rubels and transfer this money to the account of a certain firm in Saint Petersburg. For his service, the Chechnyans would pay the manager with two of the imported cars and cover a few small debts for his firm.

All went without a hitch. The machines were transported to Orel straight from Sweden, but later they disappeared without a trace. Through their own channels, police operatives found out that one of the cars was driven by Dudayev's own bodyguard.

"The avisos were the first con that the Chechnyans mastered," remembers former operative for the financial and credit fraud department for the Orlov district police, Oleg Solokhin. "One time we fumbled around in the North Caucasus for an entire month, looking for firms which were allegedly transferring money to the accounts of Orlov private firms. We didn't find a single one - all of them were fake."

The fact that similar machinations were planned and organized in Chechnya, one can judge from the confession of Ibragim Bogatayev, who was arrested in Bryansk for stealing an entire block of aviso forms. He reported to investigators that he was ordered to steal blanks by a certain Daud Omarov at a personal meeting with him in Chechnya, which took place at the entrance to the building where sat the entire leadership of the Dudayev's Iskerian republic.

It would be naive to think that this has been going on only in Orel. These tidal wave of transactions in fake avisos at the time also washed over Tver', Bryansk, Smolensk, and Yaroslavl'. The Chechnyan mafia had the entire nation in its grip, sending into the Russian countryside their compatriots from poorer clans. Their bundles were dragged out of trains and buses, they were interrogated and body searches were conducted, but no money or valuables were found.

The operatives checked their relatives in Chechnya, thinking that the money could have been transported to there somehow, but they did not find a single trace of a luxurous lifestyle. Not one of the Chechnyans who engaged in similar machinations could explain to investigators where the money had gone.

When the banks learned how to authenticate avisos, working with counterfeit papers became dangerous. Then the Chechnyans started to "buy" the people who were responsible for giving out credit. For a kickback of 20-30 %, the Chechnyans took hundreds of millions from banks under the guise of nonexistant businesses, or firms that existed only on paper.

PART TWO:

One police investigator working alone for about half a year in 1993-1994 discovered 24 "one-day firms" run by Chechnyans which received credit of a billion rubels in Orel banks. The Russian credit bureau checked out one of the branches of the Orel Sbergbank (savings bank). In their revised report they showed that 90% of the loans were given out to Chechnyans. The head bookkeeper was having an affair with one of the "highlanders", and besides this, received a solid bonus in her pay for the work. Even to an idiot it's clear that loans received in such a manner never are paid off.
Police operatives kept an on eye on one such large debtor by the name of Ruslan Khagiyev. Using a fictitious contract for the purcase of 70 train carloads of grain for the Orel countryside, he received loans for 500 million rubels. The taste of Chechnyan bread was never experienced by Orel residents, and the money also evaporated. A criminal case was opened, but it was not possible to nail Khagiyev. At his questioning he produced documents from Chechnya with the official stampsl of the regional police and agricultural administration. These showed that the grain had been paid for, but before it could be loaded the grain elevator in Khankala was bombed by federal forces.
One of the policemen on the case, Anrey Golubev, went to Khankala. "Official travel there was forbidden," he said. "War was going on. But in order to prove that our hunch was correct, we decided to risk it. I was taken to Khankala with my eyes bound. There it was clear that there was no grain elevator. There was an old barn which could maybe hold 300 kilos of grain, and there had never been any bombing in the region."
Andrey was sure that Khagiyev could not wiggle out of this one, but on returning to Orel a surprise awaited him: the chief investigator for whom Andrey was working had been pulled from the case, and it was placed on the back burner.
As became clear to our correspondent, all cases dealing with avisos and credit were either covered up with "due to absence of any evidence of criminal activity", or transfered from criminal to civil jurisdiction. No one ever went to prison, and the money was never returned to the government. Of the several billion rubels which had gone missing, only 70 million were ever recovered.
Several sources, unconnected to one another, assured us that the Chechnyans had a man in the district law enforcement body. Allegedly, he made sure that none of their compatriots ever went to court. Later he was removed from the service. According to rumors circulating in Orel, the FSB anti-terrorism detachment took an interest in him. Supposedly, the "chekists" eavesdropped on him, and recorded his conversations with Chechnyan field commanders. He had even been called right from the battle theater on field radios.
Horns and hooves
In addition to their financial machinations, the Chechnyans in the Orel region were "famous" for the mass destruction of large livestock. The slaughtered and transported canned beef as fast as they could. Inspectors who were sent to check the locality where for one to two seasons all herds had gone under the knife, recall how audaciously it was all done.
Through agreements with co-op representatives, the immigrants had gotten leases to animal-breeding operations and feedlots. For a nice reward, which allowed these reps to live high on the hog during the dark days of the early 1990s, they closed their eyes while the Chechnyans did whatever they wanted. Local residents noted how the Chechnyans cured and dried beef in enormous quantities, and how in front of their homes stood refrigerator vans. People had no doubts that the trucks were carrying the meat straight to Chechnya.
About 80 families received homes and land shares. With the aid of the co-op representative, the immigrants started farms. Chechnyans became animal technicians and veterinarians, and then the bacchanalia began: hundreds of head went under the knife because of mythological diseases. Besides this, half-ton steers were purchased under the guise of 20-kilo calves. In just such a way a certain Umayev, a farm manager, bought for himself and his relatives 50 head of beef for mere kopecks. The inspectors were never able to find out where this meat ended up.
At the Pavlovskoye co-op, according to residents of the Zalegoshchenskiy region, matters were run by one Arabiyev. He was a respected man among the local powers. He started a farm, received a herd of cattle from the co-op, as well as a flock of sheep, and a home and land.
An operative who worked on the case recalls: "When the investigators and I went to Arabiyev, the locals told us that some suspicious characters were living in his barn. We looked in and it was full of bums! A campstove, mattresses, basins of food right on the floor - like for swine. It turned out that he was catching bums at the train station and putting them to work. People assured us that he was transporting to Chechnya whole train carloads of beef."
Arabiyev was not caught for meat, but for fake avisos, but he was never sent to prison. When the case went to court he escaped to Chechnya. After awhile documentation arrived from there stating that Arabiyev had been killed in a bombing, and the case was closed.
When our corespondents went to Pavlovskoe, the locals told them that rumors about the death of Arabiyev were greatly exaggerated. He had been seen alive and well in 2002, when he came there to visit relatives.
Money for grain
Animal husbandry in the Orel countryside was "killed" for a few years, but the immigrants still had a horse left - the grain market. Police operatives assert that the bread machinations were carried out on a massive scale, but the conditions were especially favorable in the outlying regions - Livenskiy, Novosil'skiy, Zalegoshchenkiy, Verkhovskiy, Znamenskiy, Krasnozorrenskiy. According to police data, in every district center there was a man coordinating the Chechnyans work in buying and transporting grain. One cannot even count the number of cons the Chechnyans used, but here is just one of them:
The Chechnyans would put a "bought" man at the grain elevator, responsible for inspections, and he would lower the price of the farmer's grain. Allegedly it would be for low gluten, or high humidily. And while the farmer was standing there, wondering what to do with his harvest, along came an "agent" who would offer to buy the grain for cash - and at an even higher price than the elevator was offering, though still less than the true value. A majority agreed. Then the "agent" would sell this grain to that very same elevator, at the normal price. The profit from a ton would be from 100 to 300 rubels. With 20 "KaMaZ" trucks, nine thousand could be made.
Police estimate that almost 70 percent of all grain in the Orel countryside was subject to such a con. In an off the record conversation, here is what a Livenskiy regional police operative said about how the local Chechnyans made money:
"It's an old con, but why think up a new one when it all still works? Those on the bottom are intimidated, those on top are paid off. Lately, only one thing has changed - now its young, audacious Chechnyans doing it. They probably had gone through the war, and before them is a concrete assignment - how to make big money. Not long ago we intercepted a call from Chechnya. A certain 'Arbi' demanded that one of the "new guys" give him a report on how much he'd collected and when he could transfer it. By the tone of the conversation we understood that he wasn't pleased, apparantly he'd counted on a lot more."

TO BE CONTINUED

Last part:

Are we financing the terrorists ourselves?
It goes without saying, that there is nothing wrong with many residents of Chechnya leaving their country and basing themselves in other Russian regions. Like other Russians, they should not be limited in their movements or their choice to live in a more comfortable and safer place.
The Chechnyans' hunt for new places is competely understandable - it is difficult to live in a republic where there is no work, where the economic structure is in ruins, where there are no guarantees of personal security. Objectively such migrations should be hailed: people are coming who wish to work and earn money, people who are capable of contributing to the economic development of the region which they have chosen to be their new home. At the beginning of the 1990s it was so. Brigades of Chechnyans in the Orel district built houses, cowsheds, laid roads...
But later it dratically changed. As the results of our investigations in the Orel countryside show, the money that was earned through fraudulent means by the Chechnyans did not just go for their personal prosperity. But where did it go? Nowadays you can read the opinions of experts who assert that the sources of terrorist financing are not to be found just in the Arab countries, but the main source is in Russia herself.
How did it become possible that the quiet Russian province began to supply money to bandits and murderers? Corruption and bribery of officials? That too. But that is not the main reason. The real reason is our own indifference. In the Orel countryside people could see very well what the immigrants were up to, and they were silent about it for almost ten years. Not because they were afraid, simply because they did not want to get involved. They figured that what was going on was not their problem...
The tragedy in Beslan, however, has changed a lot of things, including our own consciousness. People have learned that you cannot sit on the sidelines in the war against terrorism. And in the present difficult situation we need to get to the bottom of what is actually going on in the Orel region, and similarly in other regions. And even in Chechnya, where billions disappear without a trace from the budget. Otherwise, we will continue to provide money to the murders of our children.
Yuriy Sergeev

The article you post sounds like the FSB are going after the Chechens. However, he is an article about the State Security. The FSB is pretty corrupt and may be stimulating terrorism. They are in business, and the terrorists are at war. The author Yasmann is a famous expert on the KGB and its successor agencies.

http://www.rferl.org/features/features_Article.aspx?m=09&y=2004&id=3CAB44EC-DA1D-4A9A-9366-D66C2381C27C
Analysis: Russia -- Between Terror And Corruption
By Victor Yasmann

The Moscow theater tragedy of October 2002 is still fresh in Russian minds (file photo)

[For more on the recent wave of violence in Russia's ongoing battle with terrorism, click here.]

President Vladimir Putin has taken advantage of the political climate following the tragic school hostage taking in Beslan earlier this month to accelerate his longstanding political course toward increased authoritarianism. Addressing the country on 13 September in the wake of a series of terrorist attacks that left more than 400 dead, Putin announced that Russia is now at war with international terrorism. He proposed a set of controversial political reforms, including abolishing the direct election of regional governors and the elimination of single-mandate-district representation in the State Duma. He also introduced measures to bolster the Kremlin's military-administrative control throughout the North Caucasus.

However, neither in this speech nor in other statements has Putin acknowledged a connection between Beslan and the long-running war in Chechnya. Instead, he has focused on "international terrorism" and terrorism's "supporters abroad" as the key to understanding the tragedy. However, practically no one outside Putin's administration doubts that the roots of Beslan lie in the Kremlin's policies and tactics in Chechnya. There are also few doubts that the Chechen war is consolidating international terrorism in Russia the same way that the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan activated international Muslim guerrillas.

Many analysts have argued that the continued unwillingness of the Putin administration to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict with so-called moderates within the ranks of the Chechen resistance is bolstering their cause and stimulating destabilization throughout the North Caucasus. No matter who the real organizers of the latest terrorist acts in Russia were, they would certainly not be able to find so many volunteers willing to carry them out if it were not for the devastating war in Chechnya.Over the last several years, terrorist activity in Russia has gained a new dimension that reflects a pattern similar to that seen on the international stage.

The military resistance in Chechnya shows no sign of abating despite the fact that federal forces have managed to eliminate several key field commanders in recent months, including Arbi Baraev, Ruslan Gelaev, Abu Valid, and Khattab. In all, some 20 field commanders have been killed in the past year, according to "Komsomolskaya pravda" on 13 September. About 400 people are currently serving time in Russian prisons for terrorism, while 2,000 others are being sought by the authorities, the paper reported. Many analysts have attributed the continued resistance to radical field commander Shamil Basaev, who has repeatedly slipped from the grip of Russia's special services since he committed his first terrorist act in 1991.

For years now, some voices have asserted that the secret services are not interested in capturing Basaev, who has taken responsibility for the most striking terrorist acts of recent years, including the 1995 seizure of a hospital in Budennovsk, the October 2002 takeover of the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow, and the Beslan school attack this month. Such skeptics argue that the officials in charge of the "antiterrorism operation" in Chechnya and, now, the "war against international terrorism" fear that such a victory would lead to a loss of their funding, influence, and prestige.

Others, including most recently Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, have recalled that Basaev got his start with Abkhazian separatists who were fighting against the Georgian authorities in the early 1990s with the backing of Russian military intelligence (GRU). "Basaev was the hero of the Abkhazian separatists in 1992-93," Saakashvili said on 16 September, responding to comments by Putin about separatism in the CIS, according to newsru.com on 17 September. "And the blood of Georgian citizens is on his hands. Such people are a threat to Georgia, Russia, and all mankind."

Over the last several years, terrorist activity in Russia has gained a new dimension that reflects a pattern similar to that seen on the international stage. Such practices as the use of female suicide bombers and the targeting of schools have been used by terrorists in India, Sri Lanka, and Israel. In May 1994, a group of Palestinian terrorists captured a school in Maalot, Israel, and held 115 schoolchildren and teachers hostage.

Over the last five months, Russia has experienced a range of terrorist attacks that includes political assassinations, mass guerrilla raids, the downing of civilian aircraft, suicide bombings, and the Beslan hostage taking. In none of these cases did Russia's security forces demonstrate preparedness or inspire confidence that they will be able to prevent similar acts in the future.

President Putin campaigned on a pledge to make Russia safer (file photo)

On the night of 21-22 June, a group of about 200 gunmen raided the Ingushetian capital of Nazran and took control of the city for about 12 hours. The raid left 92 dead, including 62 officials of the republican Interior Ministry and other security agencies. The raiders seized an Interior Ministry arsenal and captured 300 pistols, 322 submachine guns, and six machine guns. Duma Deputy and former Federal Security Service officer Gennadii Gudkov (Unified Russia) said the raid underscored "the failure, shame, and disgrace of the Russian secret services," gazeta.ru reported on 24 June. "How could army intelligence miss the deployment of so many Chechen fighters and how could electronic intelligence fail to intercept their communications?"

Communist Party leader Gennadii Zyuganov posted a similar statement on the party's website (http://www.kprf.ru) on 25 June. "Although we have a large military formation and special-services presence in the region, all of a sudden a gang of fighters appears and kills the leadership [of local law enforcement organs]," Zyuganov wrote. "This means that intelligence and the [security] services are working very badly."

Military journalist Vladislav Shurygin went a step further, telling "Komsomolskaya pravda" that such successes indicate that Chechen fighters have agents working within the Russian security services.

On 24 August, two civilian airliners exploded in mid-flight almost simultaneously, killing all 90 passengers and crew aboard. FSB investigators have determined that the disasters were caused by explosions on board the planes, possibly explosive devices set off by Chechen women aboard each plane, Transportation Minister Igor Levitan, the head of the state investigating commission, said.

Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov has said that both women bought their tickets for the flights immediately before departure with the help of a ticket scalper named Armen Artyunov, who allegedly paid a bribe to a Sibir Airline official in exchange for helping one of the women board her flight without being searched. Artyunov and the Sibir official have been arrested. Ustinov also said that both women arrived earlier the same day from Daghestan and were briefly detained by airport security as suspicious people. They were brought to Mikhail Artamonov, the Interior Ministry officer in charge of counterterrorism at the airport, but he released them without examining them. He has also been arrested.

The school hostage taking in Beslan on 1-3 September was the worst terrorist incident in modern Russian history, leaving at least 338 dead and more than 700 injured. In all this year, about 625 Russian citizens have been killed and more than 1,500 injured in terrorist incidents. Since the beginning of the counterterrorism operation in Chechnya in 1999, an estimated 9,000 federal troops have been killed there, "Komsomolskaya pravda" reported on 13 September.

If there is a single factor that determines the ineffectiveness of the Russian security services, it is corruption, military analyst Vladislav Shurygin wrote in "Zavtra," No. 37, this month. Shurygin argued that the main problem with Russia's secret services is that they too closely replicate Russia's corruption-riddled society. The FSB, he wrote, is clumsy, poorly managed, and servile, and pervasive corruption creates an ideal environment for terrorists. Moreover, Shurygin added, "it is not clear to Putin that the 'siloviki' are not the pillar of the state but rather are officials bogged down in intrigues and corruption who long ago forgot their duties."

The media have reported frequently on examples of how this corrupt society facilitated terrorist attacks, including traffic police who accepted bribes in exchange for not inspecting a convoy of vehicles, immigration-service officials taking money to issue travel documents to wanted criminals, corrupt military personnel who are prepared to sell modern weapons and explosives to criminals, or FSB officers who leak information about the work of their agency.

The Russian traffic police have long been identified as one of the most corrupt organizations in Russia, a problem that is particularly bad in the North Caucasus. Traffic-police veteran Batraz Takazov told Regnum on 15 September that a couple of years ago, residents in North Ossetia were so frustrated with systematic corruption by traffic police that they blocked the Transcaucasian Highway in protest. There are 20 checkpoints between Vladikavkaz and the Georgian border and motorists can be forced to pay bribes at each one. Those who pay particularly well can be assured of getting even a police escort that can take you all the way to the border without stopping.

"Komsomolskaya pravda" wrote on 13 September that terrorists are now using increasingly sophisticated weapons and explosives. A few years ago, they used mainly ordnance retrieved from unexploded shells and bombs, while now they use industrial explosives that are normally employed by the special services. The terrorists who attacked Beslan were equipped with the best sniper rifles and even the state-of-the-art Shmel flamethrower, the daily wrote. Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkov told TV-Tsentr on 7 September that security officials must be held accountable for Beslan. "We must ask them why the terrorists in Beslan had the best Russian weapons," Luzhkov said.

"Vremya novostei" and "Novye izvestiya" reported on 21 September that police the previous day arrested an FSB border-service warrant officer and two other men who are accused of helping wanted criminals to flee the country. One of the men allegedly roamed Moscow looking for clients, while another, a Palestinian who owns a small tourism company, provided them with false passports and other documents. The FSB officer then allegedly helped the clients to pass through the airport-security checkpoint where he worked. Reportedly, the group took $1,500 for each border crossing. During the arrest, investigators seized 10 blank Russian passports, airplane tickets, and more than 60 stamps of various organizations, including those of FSB border-service checkpoints. Investigators are still trying to determine how many criminals' escapes were abetted by this group.

The situation clearly demonstrates more than simply that Russia's security services are incapable of fighting modern terrorism; it suggests that their ineptitude and corruption are actually stimulating terrorism. As a special-forces officer in the popular new television series "Anti-Killer" said when asked why the terrorists are winning: "Because we are in business, and they are at war."
author biography

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(Original Title) Guerillas steal their money from the Russian countryside!

How much does it cost to blow up an airplane