| Yaponchik's friend will not serve a life sentence The trial of Alexander Bohr, nicknamed Timokha, whom the intelligence services call the head of the “Russian mafia” abroad, ended quite unexpectedly yesterday in a Munich court. German authorities arrested Yaponchik's closest friend and associate back in 2000 on charges of racketeering and murder. As a result, Bohr was sentenced to life imprisonment, but lawyers appealed this verdict to the Supreme Federal Court of Germany. The Supreme Court overturned the verdict and sent the case back for retrial. Yesterday it ended, and Timokha received “only” 13 years in prison.
Alexander Bor was born in Belarus and, back in Soviet times, received several convictions for various crimes. At the same time, he acquired connections in the criminal world, especially becoming friends with thief in law Vyacheslav Ivankov (Yaponchik). In the late 1980s, Timokha went abroad, where he established contacts with the entire elite of the foreign “Russian mafia” - Efim Laskin (Fima), Joseph Roytsis (Cannibal), Boris Nayfeld (Biba), etc. In 1991, Laskin was completely murdered in Germany, after which Bohr hastily returned to Belarus. And when Vyacheslav Ivankov moved to the USA a few years later, Timokha followed there. Soon, Yaponchik was arrested on charges of extorting money from entrepreneurs closely associated with Chara Bank, and, according to the FBI, it was Bor who took the vacated position as the head of the “Russian mafia” abroad. He established contacts with the Italian gangster families Gambino and Grovano, with whom he carried out a major scam on the US stock exchange. At the same time, a new, smart financier appeared in Bohr’s brigade - Mike Hess, to whom Timokha trusted and told many of his secrets. He did it in vain.
As it turned out, Mike Hess was FBI agent Mikhail Syroezhin. At one time, he was one of the leaders of the television company "St. Petersburg - Channel 5", and the Prosecutor General's Office put him on the wanted list for embezzling $2 million. Syroezhin fled from investigation in the United States, where he made a deal with the FBI - the American authorities do not extradite him his Russia, and in return he must infiltrate Bohr’s group.
For a long time, the FBI, through Syroezhin, collected information about Bor, and in 1999 they began mass raids. Then almost all members of Timokha’s brigade were detained, but he himself managed to escape and went to Belgium in transit through Germany using a fake passport. This is where he was arrested.
According to the German police, back in the late 80s of the last century, Bor, together with his accomplices, extorted a large sum from one woman. Unable to withstand the torture, the unfortunate woman jumped out of the window and remained disabled. He was also accused of murdering Yefim Laskin.
The situation with this crime is more complicated. Efim Laskin was called the head of the “Russian mafia” in Western Europe by the special services. According to German law enforcement agencies, at one time Fima had a serious conflict with Boris Nayfeld. In 1991, Laskin came to the next showdown in the town of Ungererbad. Bor and Nayfeld also went there. As a result, the conversation escalated into a fight, in the midst of which someone stabbed Fima with a knife. The police are confident that Bor was the killer.
At the first trial in Munich court, Timokha refused to testify. A representative of the American Drug Enforcement Administration, Louis Cardinali, acted as a witness there and stated that he had the testimony of Joseph Roytsis (the Cannibal) on Bora. In the early 1990s, Cardinali conducted an operation to capture drug traffickers, among whom was the Maneater. Roycis entered into a standard agreement with the US intelligence services and handed over all his colleagues. In particular, he said that in 1992, Bor admitted to him in a personal meeting that it was he who killed Yefim Laskin. Representatives of the court decided to interrogate the Cannibal, who at that moment was under house arrest in Italy on charges of money laundering. Roytsis demanded $3 million for his appearance in the Munich court, and having been refused, he stated that Cardinali had not said anything like that about Bohr. Despite this, on September 27, 2002, Timokha was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, Bohr's lawyers managed to overturn this verdict in the Supreme Court of Germany. The repeated process began last summer. The hearings were held in high security - the courthouse was invariably surrounded by police, and there were snipers on the roofs of neighboring houses.
This time Bohr decided to speak at the trial. According to his version, in 1991 Laskin kidnapped the son of a businessman with whom Fima had a conflict. The gangsters decided to discuss the problem at a meeting in Ungererbad, during which one of the friends of the offended businessman stabbed Laskin with a knife. The Munich court weighed all the arguments for a long time and announced its verdict yesterday. Themis' servants felt that Timokha deserved some leniency, since his role in the murder had not been established with certainty. As a result, he was given 13 years in prison, of which he had already served four years during the investigation.
“We are satisfied with this verdict,” Bohr’s lawyer Martin Amelung told Vremya Novostey. “We won’t be able to do more for our client, so we won’t challenge the verdict.” Alexander SHVAREV |
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