Russia Cops Are Robbers, Protection Racket Boss Says

He has a full-time army of 120 thugs who collect money from 250 businesses each month, and he insists he is doing his “clients” a favor.

“If the police boss . . . could guarantee businessmen what we guarantee them, they would go to him and ask for protection,” the unapologetic racketeer said.

Call him Alex. The 34-year-old crime boss agreed to a rare interview with foreign journalists on condition that neither he nor his city, a grimy industrial town in the Sverdlovsk district, be named.

Alex has a legitimate-looking business, calls himself a merchant and does not think of himself as a mobster.

Police say his outfit is “a typical bandit organization under the direct control” of Ekaterinburg’s most famous crime boss, Konstantin Tsyganov.

But to Alex and his lawyer, and to some of the businesses they protect, it is the cops who are the robbers in Russia.

“I can’t blame the police for taking bribes, because they have to have a salary of at least $640 a month to be able to feed their families,” Alex said. “But before their salaries go up, about 70% of them should be fired. . . .

“Police now take their bribes like this: They want to buy a sheepskin coat or a VCR that costs maybe $400, but the stores sell it to them for $50 to avoid problems. . . .

“Sometimes they keep raiding a certain firm until they get a car or something big in return for leaving them in peace,” he said. “They are racketeers and extortionists, but are protected by the law. They milk business, but provide little or no protection. And they hate us, because we are their competition.”

Alex insisted that his men have never threatened any business person into paying protection money. On the contrary, he said, local businesses desperate for powerful friends offer to pay him up to 30% of their monthly profit in exchange for a wide array of services.

Businesses under Alex’s wing are given a “cooperation agreement” by his firm. They can wave this document in the faces of competing extortionists, burglars and street thugs, who tend to steer clear.

Alex’s security guards stop by every day, sometimes several times a day, to make sure their clients are not being harassed.

In case of trouble, Alex said, his men have a huge arsenal: pistols, Kalashnikov assault rifles and Uzi sub-machine guns, antitank guns, grenade launchers and hand grenades.

“The market is full of weapons,” Alex said. “We can always buy weapons from the military. We have lots of ammunition too.”

He believes that it will soon be needed for an impending mob war.

Besides the protection racket, Alex said he oversees the local prostitution business, but he is firmly opposed to drug trafficking.

“We all have children,” he said by way of explanation.

If a client’s car is stolen, Alex said his men find it. If an apartment is burglarized, they retrieve the stolen merchandise.

“We have our ways of tracking these things down,” he said. The police cannot be bothered to do so, he said.

Alex said he cannot promise to keep the tax inspector at bay, as a new and vigorous collection system has recently been instituted.

He would not say whether he had managed to co-opt the old tax officials. The police, however, do not trouble his clients.

“We don’t need to bother to try to buy the cops,” Alex’s lawyer said sourly. “They are selling themselves, no problem.”