Mark Galeotti has an appreciation of the recently assassinated Russian mob boss Aslan Usoyan, who went by the name Grandfather Hassan. This stuck out:
However, in the later 1990s, his position was in peril. In 1996, he was arrested and charged with the murder of rival kingpin Amiran Pyatigorsky. He was acquitted, but Pyatogorsky’s death was just part of a wider war with ‘Rudik’, an Armenian gang leader eager to loosen Usoyan’s grip on the Caucasus region of Mineralnye Vody. Without letting up on more direct attacks (Usoyan survived an assassination attempt in summer 1998), Rudik also turned to his rival’s stewardship of the obshchak, accusing him of concealing profits and mismanagement. Usoyan’s misfortune was that in 1998, a financial crisis saw the ruble devalued and much of the obshchak was in the form of government bonds, once seemingly safe but now equally devalued. Usoyan’s former allies turned on him.
The obshchak is the venture capital fund maintained by Russian mob consortia and held by a senior trusted figure in the milieu. So this chap Usoyan rises through the challenging world of Russian gangsterism to the point where all the other ruthless bastards trust him with their money. And then he puts it in Russian government bonds, while Yeltsin's in charge. I'm kind of imagining the meeting where he pulls out the email from the late Nigerian dictator's widow and says 'lads, we've got it made.'
What, no Reamde inside jokes?
Or did I miss one?
Posted by: shah8 | January 16, 2013 at 11:11 PM
If only they'd given the obshchak to Orlando the cat instead.http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/jan/13/investments-stock-picking
Posted by: ajay | January 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM