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The Kremlin and the FSB with its predecessors had never hesitated to use the Mafiya for their dirty work, notably criminal operations and politically motivated assassinations.
Sergei Tarasov for one was familiar with the murky links that existed between the Kremlin and the Mafiya and no one was better positioned than he to understand the fragility of wealth, especially that which sprung from the discrete patronage of those two institutions, where the dividing line between individual interests and matters of state was sometimes blurred.
On the one hand Tarasov was the head of a powerful Moscow based banking group obeying the laws of the Russian universe, and on the other he was an international businessman living in London conforming to the rules and regulations of British society and the City.
His connection with the Kremlin was other than that of a City banker, taking, on occasions, cues from Downing Street, much more. As for his dealings in Moscow, they often took place behind by a heavily veiled façade of respectability that hid dark secrets, financial arrangements between the inner circle of Russian power and the Mafiya underworld, a tradition that could never be understood in London, one that Tarasov exercised with the very greatest discretion.
He had seen so many of his class eliminated after falling foul of political interference: imprisoned, forced into exile and even assassinated. It was endemic in all authoritarian regimes. Tarasov remembered men like Saïf Gaddafi, whom he had met on occasions in London, Montenegro and Greece. The son of the Libyan dictator, who had been fêted by Western businessmen, flattered by British politicians and praised by London academics. Then, with the downfall and death of his infamous father, Saïf was condemned to rot in a Libyan prison, accused, amongst other things, of threatening his country’s national security and insulting its new national flag.
Tarasov was different from other oligarchs. Unknown to his partners, with perhaps the exception of Pat Kennedy, he had been the chosen protégé of Alyosha Dermirshian, the late lamented head of a powerful branch of the tentacular Russian Mafiya, a vast, clandestine, system of crime syndicates that penetrated every corner of the country’s political and business system, as it always had; under the czars, the Soviet Union and their successors.
Different groups, all part of the Братва, or brotherhood, cooperated or shared services when it suited them. The Красная мафия, Red Mafiya, which had flourished in the black market of the Soviet era, then during the period of chaos following the dissolution of the USSR, had since diversified and expanded its interests.
Dermirshian’s corrupt business grew at an exponential pace once the Russian property boom started, he had enlarged his empire by seizing control of weaker gang’s by force and political manoeuvring. He was aided by former Communist officials and the new class of business leaders that emerged from the ruins of the Soviet economy.
His empire had created a façade of respectability through the acquisition of a small bank, Mosbank, which at the outset was nothing more than a tool to launder money from its serendipitously acquired property empire in St Petersburg and Moscow.
This enabled Dermirshian to enter the opaque post-Soviet world of Russian politics as well as reinforce ties with other crime syndicates, running groups within and outside of Russia, transforming his operations into a global business. He traded in everything legal and illegal: commodities, casinos; night clubs, arms, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, immigration, diamonds and money-laundering.
Wisely Dermirshian retired to Monte-Carlo, whilst those less intelligent killed or were killed in the fight for power, money, territory and supremacy. During this time Sergei Tarasov transformed Mosbank into InterBank, distancing it from its Mafiya roots, building it into a powerful business institution that reached out to the City of London, where, after joining forces with Michael Fitzwilliams’ crisis hit bank, the INI Banking Corporation was born.
Cornucopia Page 30
