LOS ANGELES TIMES


SVERDLOVSK DISTRICT, Ural Mountains ? 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," the unapologetic racketeer said, "could guarantee businessmen what we guarantee them, they would go to him and ask for protection."


Call him Alex. The crime boss, 34, 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 Yekaterinburg'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 percent of them should be fired."


He explained: "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 percent of their monthly profit for a wide array of services.


Businesses under Alex's wing are given a "cooperation agreement" from 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, to make sure their clients are not being harassed.


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


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.