Transnational crime: The case of Russian organized crime and the role of international cooperation in law enforcement

Among the most successful Russian-American cooperation is that done in combating child pornography and sex tourism. This investigative responsibility belongs to the U.S. Customs Service because they investigate smuggling over the Internet. Initially, U.S.-based investigations identified Russian-American exchanges of child pornography. Customs officials approached the Russian central law enforcement bureaucracy and received little assistance. But cooperation was more readily established at the local operational level.

The absence of harmonized legislation between Russia and the United States proved to be an advantage. Russians seized computers from the Russian suspects believed to be selling child pornography to American customers. American investigators obtained access to the e-mail records of the seized computers and conducted an investigation tracing the Western Union payments from the United States to Russia for the purchase of child pornography. On the basis of this cooperation, a search warrant was issued in the United States, the tapes made in Russia were found in the suspect's apartment in the United States, and he was arrested. The Russian defendants associated with the case were initially arrested, but charges were dropped under a new amnesty program. But all their pornographic tapes were confiscated and their business halted.

This initial cooperative investigation was reported in the Russian press. But other investigations are ongoing in the areas of child pornography and sex tourism by Americans, with very fruitful cooperation with Russian law enforcement. 37 These cases represent a shared commitment to deal with a serious problem. Furthermore, they show the possibilities of cooperating on investigations of computer crime.

The most successful example of FBI-Russian cooperation is in the case of Yaponchik, an alias of Viacheslav Ivankov, a thief-in-law (a translation of vory v zakkone), an elite figure in the Russian criminal hierarchy. 38 He epitomizes the old type of organized crime in which there is an established hierarchy in the criminal organization, rituals and rules of compliance with the criminal underworld. The thieves-in-law are well known to the Russian law enforcement bodies, which have identified several hundred. They exercise control over a particular territory and are engaged in the violence that characterizes traditional criminal organizations.

Yaponchik ran rackets, extorted money from businesses, and ordered violent retaliation against those who stood in his way. 39 He spent many years in Soviet labor camps in Siberia and emerged from prison in 1991. He had many criminal ties to Siberia as well as to Moscow. 40

Yaponchik entered the United States illegally with a fraudulently obtained visa. Russian law enforcement authorities tipped their counterparts in the United States to his arrival. According to both Russian and American law enforcement authorities, he began to organize and exercise control over different smaller scale Russian criminal activities in the United States. Yaponchik was placed under surveillance and also subject to wiretaps. One of the wiretaps revealed that he was planning a hit against the FBI legal attache in Moscow. The undercover operation against Yaponchik had to be terminated prematurely because once information is obtained that someone's life is in danger, an operation cannot continue. Consequently, Yaponchik was not tried under a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act statute, which would have led to a longer sentence, but instead was tried on extortion charges.