Russia - the country of pyramids

WE ARE SITTING AND THE MONEY IS GOING...

Leva Konstantinov had a difficult childhood. Then, on the eve of the trial, his mother Liya Konstantinova told the investigator how difficult it was for her to raise her son alone, how she suffered and worried that she could not buy him a bicycle or good toys that most of his peers had...

A mother’s heart, as we know, is not a stone, so she decided to give her son a comfortable, good life at all costs. For this purpose, Liya Konstantinova organized and registered - first in Volgograd, and in 1994 in Moscow - the Khoper-Invest company. The company's rapid activity immediately began to be actively advertised on television. The youthful colonel, who every evening told the audience in a loud commanding voice that he was “already at Khopra in the morning,” evoked trust with his open eyes, military bearing and wide smile. “This guy won’t deceive,” thought the simple-minded citizens and willingly took their savings to the Konstantinovs.

As it turned out later during the investigation, on paper “Khoper” built stores and purchased products, entered into contracts with certain Western companies, but in reality Liya Konstantinova persistently and methodically transported all the cash abroad. Sometimes - through fake accounts: both the Bank of New York and the Moscow People's Bank in London were involved in the Khopra case. More often, without further ado, Liya Konstantinova sent dollars by couriers, in ordinary suitcases. As one of these couriers told the court, in just three months of 1994 he purchased four and a half million dollars for the Konstantinovs at exchange offices. Until the moment the money crossed the border and ended up in bank safes, it was simply, without any complications, stored in bags at Lia Konstantinova’s house. When she was arrested, her beloved son had already been living comfortably in Israel for several years and, naturally, had no intention of returning.

In memory of the mountains of gold that Khoper promised its investors, there is only one store left in Russia, built in Elista, the capital of the very Republic of Kalmykia, which is led by the energetic Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. He, having picked up the banner that had fallen from Konstantinova’s hands, put things on a grand scale: he erected “New Vasyuki” in the middle of the desert - the chess capital, where he plans to organize world-class championships in the future. No one knows how much money is “buried in the sand.”

“We sit, and the money flows” - there was such a commercial with popular actors. Did not come. Financial pyramids began to collapse one after another, burying the naive hopes of investors for quick profits under their rubble.

Citizens crowding in lines near the locked doors of MMM, Khopr and the Selenga Trading House had no time to follow what was happening in the south, in another small but very independent North Caucasian republic.

...And when I received the next release
All for the fact that the wolves bit off too much -
He, as if by accident, bearishly
growled
But they didn’t pay attention then...

In life everything was almost the same as in Vysotsky’s famous song. For the time being, Moscow did not pay too much attention to what was happening in Chechnya. In the capital they were busy with their own showdowns: first the president sorted out relations with the Supreme Council, then the elections occupied the minds... The newspapers made noise about the grandiose scam with Chechen advice notes, and then everything calmed down. But later the Kremlin decided: it was time to punish Dudayev.

A year before the war, Zhirinovsky dreamed out loud about how Russian soldiers would wash their boots in the Indian Ocean... But it was Zhirinovsky! Nobody believed that war was possible.

Yegor Gaidar was one of the few who warned about the dangers of such a decision. “Isn’t it clear that we now need a small, victorious war?” - he heard in response. This small victorious war still cannot end.

Ekaterina SAFONOVA

On photos:

THESE PEOPLE, STANDING IN FRONT OF THE FRONT ENTRANCE OF DIFFERENT "MMM", BELIEVE ALMOST TO THE END - THE MONEY WILL BE SAVED...

WE SITT AND THE MONEY GOES IN...