Ten days ago, the newspapers in New York were full of it: Vyacheslav Ivankov, known variously as Yaponets and Yaponchik, or The Japanese, "because of his slightly oriental appearance," had been arrested at his girlfriend's apartment in Brooklyn, accused of masterminding a scheme to extort $3.5 million from two Russian businessmen. The businessmen had been kidnapped in Manhattan and shaken down in Queens. The father of one of them was then beaten to death in a Moscow metro station to make it an offer they could not refuse.
The papers, beyond saying that Yaponchik "belonged to the notorious Russian 'thieves-in-law,'" were a little shaky on his background, however. So I'd like to help them out -- and to show in the process that, if he was guilty of the alleged crimes, the Japanese was simply reverting to a, decidedly strange, type.
Yaponchik, now 55, first came to prominence in the 1960s, when he was a member of a gang specializing in blackmail and extortion, led by Gennady Kharkov, The Mongol, said to be the head of Moscow's organized crime. The Mongol had a reputation for extreme ferocity -- using saws, for example, on his victims -- and was the first of the thieves-in-law, the Russian Yakuza, to shake down drug dealers and underground millionaires.
This was Yaponchik's first stock in trade. He often posed as an officer in the militia to lure his victims in, and operated as far away from Moscow as Sverdlovsk. He, too, soon gained a brutal reputation. He was given, they said, to building his victims into the tarmac of new roads and then steamrollering them down. He also apparently liked to push plastic bags up the rectums of his victims and then use an oxy-acetylene torch to weld them shut.
In 1981, Yaponchik was sentenced to fourteen years for robbery and extortion. And it was probably in prison that he was crowned a thief-in-law, and swore allegiance to the criminal brotherhood's code. At any rate, he never served out his full sentence. After appeals were made on his behalf, he was freed in November 1991 "for good behavior." He flew back to Moscow from Irkutsk, it's said, on a chartered plane. He was given millions of rubles and a Mercedes from the thieves-in-law's central fund and set about the business of bringing the Chechen mafias into line with the rulings of the criminal world's Moscow center.
Sometime in 1992, he disappeared from Moscow and then reappeared in Los Angeles, where he was said to have become the Russian mob's link to the Columbian cartels. After that, he seems to have shifted his base of operations to New York and to have moved regularly between the Big Apple, Vienna and Dusseldorf. He's also said to have had a number of meetings with Russian organized-crime figures in various cities in the United States and Canada.
The move to New York would have made sense. For in 1985, the godfather of Brighton Beach, Evsei Agron, had been killed outside his Brooklyn apartment. And his successor, Marat Balagula, known as The Georgian or The Giant -- the man who had brought the American-based Organizatsiya to maturity through a series of jewelry heists, insurance frauds, and an enormous gasoline bootlegging and tax scam -- had been arrested in Frankfurt in 1989. Two years later, outside Moscow, there was a big meeting of 100 of the Russian thieves-in-law to discuss how to operate in the new circumstances prevailing after the August coup. It's believed to have started the movement of the Russian mafias into bank operations, bank scams and money laundering. And it would have made sense to have set a strategy there -- ultimately using Yaponchik -- to bring the New York Organizatsiya back into line. This would have made even greater sense after the death of the last important traditional thief-in-law Rafik Svo, in June 1993. After that, the impulse would have been to go international -- as the Moscow group seems to have done in meetings with leaders of organized crime from other countries -- notably Italy.
The story of Yaponchik's arrest in New York is one that will run and run -- since it fits in so neatly with many of America's current prejudices about Russia. All one can hope is that the reporters will do their homework and that detectives in New York will recognize the differences between their own domestic Mafia and the idiosyncratically foreign world of the Russian thieves-in-law. For then, through Yaponchik, we will see a truly fascinating piece of Russian history unravel, and have to face once again the abiding truth that, in Moscow, we're simply not in Kansas any more.
The papers, beyond saying that Yaponchik "belonged to the notorious Russian 'thieves-in-law,'" were a little shaky on his background, however. So I'd like to help them out -- and to show in the process that, if he was guilty of the alleged crimes, the Japanese was simply reverting to a, decidedly strange, type.
Yaponchik, now 55, first came to prominence in the 1960s, when he was a member of a gang specializing in blackmail and extortion, led by Gennady Kharkov, The Mongol, said to be the head of Moscow's organized crime. The Mongol had a reputation for extreme ferocity -- using saws, for example, on his victims -- and was the first of the thieves-in-law, the Russian Yakuza, to shake down drug dealers and underground millionaires.
This was Yaponchik's first stock in trade. He often posed as an officer in the militia to lure his victims in, and operated as far away from Moscow as Sverdlovsk. He, too, soon gained a brutal reputation. He was given, they said, to building his victims into the tarmac of new roads and then steamrollering them down. He also apparently liked to push plastic bags up the rectums of his victims and then use an oxy-acetylene torch to weld them shut.
In 1981, Yaponchik was sentenced to fourteen years for robbery and extortion. And it was probably in prison that he was crowned a thief-in-law, and swore allegiance to the criminal brotherhood's code. At any rate, he never served out his full sentence. After appeals were made on his behalf, he was freed in November 1991 "for good behavior." He flew back to Moscow from Irkutsk, it's said, on a chartered plane. He was given millions of rubles and a Mercedes from the thieves-in-law's central fund and set about the business of bringing the Chechen mafias into line with the rulings of the criminal world's Moscow center.
Sometime in 1992, he disappeared from Moscow and then reappeared in Los Angeles, where he was said to have become the Russian mob's link to the Columbian cartels. After that, he seems to have shifted his base of operations to New York and to have moved regularly between the Big Apple, Vienna and Dusseldorf. He's also said to have had a number of meetings with Russian organized-crime figures in various cities in the United States and Canada.
The move to New York would have made sense. For in 1985, the godfather of Brighton Beach, Evsei Agron, had been killed outside his Brooklyn apartment. And his successor, Marat Balagula, known as The Georgian or The Giant -- the man who had brought the American-based Organizatsiya to maturity through a series of jewelry heists, insurance frauds, and an enormous gasoline bootlegging and tax scam -- had been arrested in Frankfurt in 1989. Two years later, outside Moscow, there was a big meeting of 100 of the Russian thieves-in-law to discuss how to operate in the new circumstances prevailing after the August coup. It's believed to have started the movement of the Russian mafias into bank operations, bank scams and money laundering. And it would have made sense to have set a strategy there -- ultimately using Yaponchik -- to bring the New York Organizatsiya back into line. This would have made even greater sense after the death of the last important traditional thief-in-law Rafik Svo, in June 1993. After that, the impulse would have been to go international -- as the Moscow group seems to have done in meetings with leaders of organized crime from other countries -- notably Italy.
The story of Yaponchik's arrest in New York is one that will run and run -- since it fits in so neatly with many of America's current prejudices about Russia. All one can hope is that the reporters will do their homework and that detectives in New York will recognize the differences between their own domestic Mafia and the idiosyncratically foreign world of the Russian thieves-in-law. For then, through Yaponchik, we will see a truly fascinating piece of Russian history unravel, and have to face once again the abiding truth that, in Moscow, we're simply not in Kansas any more.
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