Mafia Evidence Aff

The Mafia is Currently in Control of Russia

Gary T. Dempsey, January 7th, 1998,  Researcher at the Cato Institute, "Mafia Capitalism or Red Legacy?" http://www.cato.org/dailys/1-07-98.html

Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs recently pegged the number of criminal organizations operating in that country at 9,000. One prominent Moscow think tank now figures that four of five Russian businesses pay protection money. An estimated 8,000 Russians have mysteriously vanished from their homes, which have become lucrative pieces of real estate since the collapse of communism.

Organized Crime Greatest Threat To Russia

J. Waller and J. Yasmann, December, 1995 (American Foreign Policy Council, "Russia's Great Criminal Revolution: The role of the Security Services", Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Vol. 11)

Russian leaders have begun to acknowledge that the greatest clear and present danger to the security of society and indeed, of the Russian State itself, is internal corruption and crime. Ironically, the services responsible for "state security" are more a part of the problem than the solution.

These Crime Bosses Want an Authoritarian Russia

Gary T. Dempsey, January 7th, 1998,  Researcher at the Cato Institute, "Mafia Capitalism or Red Legacy?" http://www.cato.org/dailys/1-07-98.html

Unfortunately, widespread violence and crime in Russia have also generated nostalgia for authoritarian rule. Flagrant lawlessness has resulted in a resurgence of politicians who promise to re-establish order and fairness using the brute force of government. Indeed, increased criminal activities fueled the backlash that contributed to ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's electoral success in 1993. Zhirinovsky's platform included on-the-spot executions of criminal gang leaders by firing squads and the wholesale seizure of assets thought to belong to criminals.

Russian Mafia Involved In the Drug Trade

Jose Loria, "Russian Mafia Seen Moving Into Latin American Drugs", Rueters News Service, SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, March 24, 1998

"We now have a common enemy and little-known enemy in the region: the Russian Mafia," Colombian Police Chief Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano told a 30-nation conference on drug control that began in this Central American capital on Tuesday.  Notoriously violent and corrupting, Russian organized crime rings came to prominence after the fall of the Soviet Union. Their presence in the multibillion-dollar drug trade in this hemisphere would make an extremely taxing job even worse, Serrano said.

95% of Cops paid by Mafia, 4/5 businesses pay Mafia...they own Russia  

Pyotr Filippov, director of the government-sponsored Analytical Center for Social and Economic Policies, "The New Mafia Order", http://www.alternatives.com/crime/vivian1.html

Four out of five Russian businesses are now paying protection money to the reketiry, or to their political henchmen. The public authorities in much of the country are so intimidated by the Mafia, claims Filippov, that they send requests for business permits to local godfathers for approval. Moscow's chief of police says he is convinced that 95 percent of his own cops are on the take. 

Foreign Aid Will Help Decrease Mafia Crime

William Norman Grigg, "Russia's Global Crime Cartel, Dirty cops in the former Soviet Union run both sides of the law", THE NEW AMERICAN, 1996, http://www.jbs.org/vo12no11.htm
 
During his recent visit to Moscow, President Clinton renewed his commitment to a "strategic partnership" with Russia to protect Yeltsin's "reforms" and contain the threat posed by international terrorism and organized crime. These themes had been examined at length in an April 1st speech to the U.S.-Russian Business Council in Washington, DC by National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who urged continued support for foreign aid to Russia. "A stable, democratic-oriented, market-oriented Russia will be far less likely to threaten America's security and far more likely to work with us to solve global problems" such as "the growth of international crime," Lake declared. 

Mafia is a Product of the KGB

William Norman Grigg, "Russia's Global Crime Cartel, Dirty cops in the former Soviet Union run both sides of the law", THE NEW AMERICAN, 1996,http://www.jbs.org/vo12no11.htm

However, there is nothing novel about the activities or ambitions of the Russian mob. In an April 1994 interview published in the International Herald Tribune, Georgian Mafia leader Otari Kvantrishvili boasted: "They write that I am the Mafia's godfather. It was Vladimir Lenin who was the real organizer of the Mafia and who set up the criminal state." In 1995, former Lithuanian Vice President Algirdas Katkus stated that although "Westerners believe that the Mafia is the product of post-Communism ... in reality it is organized, staffed, and controlled by the KGB."
