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

Much of the Russian-American cooperation is coordinated by the international department of the Procuracy General of the Russian Federation, which explains much about the vicissitudes in the relationship. The procuracy, the key institution of the Russian legal system, has not been freed from telephone justice and has been forced to be subservient to the political interests of the Kremlin. This pressure is applied by the Kremlin and the oligarchs on the national level and by the governors on the regional level, where the regional international departments of the procuracy also respond to numerous international requests.

The pressure on the procuracy became a subject of national and international media scrutiny after Attorney General Skuratov began an investigation with Swiss authorities of corruption in the Yeltsin family and entourage. 34 Not only was Skuratov shown on the national media cavorting with prostitutes but he was forbidden to travel abroad, and a criminal case was initiated against him.

The discreditation of Skuratov made blatantly clear the difficulties of investigating high-level corruption. But the investigation of bribery connected with the Kremlin renovation was not the first case in which procurators were circumscribed in cooperating with their foreign counterparts. Even before this internationally visible derailment of a serious criminal investigation, major efforts were made to impede the investigation of the Golden Ada case, which implicated such high-level officials as the deputy prime minister and the minister of finance. 35

Typology of Cases and Cooperation

In the following section I focus on three cases that are emblematic of the Russian-American cooperative relationship. They include a case of child pornography on the Internet, the traditional organized crime investigation around Yaponchik, and the complex financial case of Golden Ada. The three cases show very different degrees of success in cooperation, depending on the type of crime committed and the amount of mutual interest in addressing the underlying problem. The extent to which corruption influences the cooperative relationship differs dramatically depending on the offense and the level of power of the participants. 36 The absence of harmonized legislation can be a problem in some cases but can even prove beneficial in others. The movement of crime into the digital era may complicate the investigations of complex financial crimes, but it may actually facilitate the investigation of child pornography if there is the technical capacity to address the problem.

These cases do not bring out some nuances of the cooperative relationship that should be highlighted. There is much routine cooperation on cases of fraud, homicide, and embezzlement. Representative of this is the Breskin and Korogosky case, which resulted in the conviction of two Russian emigres for conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. They had committed the crimes after establishing a phony charity to help Chernobyl victims, which served as a front to defraud customers in Russia. In this case, in which there was clear harm done in Russia and the defendants were not Russians or members of the elite, there was significant cooperation. Cooperation from the Russian side appears to be greatest in cases where defendants are members of ethnic minorities rather than Russians. This may be a result of discrimination, political pressure, and also a desire to define the problem of the Russian mafia as not really Russian, a position assumed frequently by members of Russian law enforcement.