When Victims Rule (pdf)

DRUGS AND DRUG MONEY LAUNDERING WITHIN JEWISH NETWORKS: THE ‘RUSSIAN MAFIA,’ ‘ULTRA-ORTHODOX’
Amir further notes formal Israeli anthropological studies into the Georgian
Jewish crime community. These investigations concluded that the Georgians’
“original normative system” of crime “favored their immediate entrance and
persistence into organized criminality and organized crime.” The results of fifteen
years of Israeli efforts to dissuade Jewish Georgians from crime were a
“success” only to the degree that they left Israel and had “continued their criminal
activities in their new ‘places’ while maintaining criminal relations with
their brethren who remain in Israel (e.g., contraband goods, drugs, laundering
money or distributing counterfeit money, produced in Israel [and] in Europe.”
[AMIR, M., 1996, p. 29-30]
In explaining to the United States Senate the workings of the “Russian Mafia,”
two of the top three crime groups cited by an undercover police agent were
expressly noted to have links to Israel:
“1) Izmailovskaya organization. This is based in Moscow and is several
thousand members strong. Its leaders reside in Russia and Israel. The
group uses quasi-military ranks and is very strict in disciplining its members.
It is involved extensively in murder-for-hire, extortions, and infiltration
of legitimate businesses.
2) Solntsevskaya organization. This is based in Moscow. Its leaders reside
in Russia, Central Europe, and Israel. The group is active in extortion, infiltration
of legitimate businesses, counterfeiting, and the trafficking in
illegal drugs.” [US, COMM, PERM, p. 201] This crime gang is “the largest
mafia organization in Russia.” [DUNN, G., 1996, p. 81] It is headed
by Jewish mogul Sergei Mikhailov. [BONNER, B., 11-16-00]
In 1997 Agence France Presse reported that in Geneva
“suspected Mafia godfather, Sergei Mikhailov, had been questioned
for four hours by a Russian police officer, prosecutors said here Friday
… Before the interrogation, Mikhailov was questioned for 11 hours by
two Israeli police officers about illegal immigration to the Jewish state
… ‘Mikhas’ was carrying an Israeli passport when he was arrested in
Switzerland. He is said to be linked to the Solntsevskaya, an organization
named after a Moscow neighborhood.” [AGENCE FRANCE, 1997]
It may be that the aforementioned Senate testifier merely neglected Jewish/
Israeli pre-eminence in the third Russian crime family. As the New York Review
of Books noted in November 2000 in a review of the book The Russian Mafiya:
“’Of all the nations where the Russian mob has established a presence,
none has been more deeply compromised than the State of Israel,’ [author
Robert] Friedman writes, adding that the Russian mafia has ‘become
a grave threat to the stability of Israel.’ Although this may be a bit
hyperbolic, the Russian mafia does have a strong, safe base in Israel – a
story that American and Israeli journalists have largely overlooked. One
FBI report observes, for example, that most members of [Jewish crime
boss Semion] Mogilevich’s criminal organization have Israeli passports.
And Jonathan Winer told Friedman (when Winer was still the State Department’s
crime expert), ‘There is not a major Russian organized crime
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