Expert

Vladimir Ovchinsky, retired police major general

Raiding has become a distinctive feature of the entire Russian economy and the main content of the activities of organized criminal communities.

According to the Accounts Chamber, from 60 to 70 thousand raider attacks are carried out annually. Most often, raiders attack small and medium-sized businesses that have the form of a limited liability company (2/3 of all calls to law enforcement agencies). Against this background, no more than 300-400 criminal cases related to raiding are initiated. Only a tenth of these cases reach the court. Raiders use all modern methods of conducting information and psychological warfare against the targets of their attacks. Since raiding has always been associated with the mafia, in addition to economic methods, purely criminal methods associated with violence continue to be practiced here. In Primorye in August, a gang that tried to carry out a raider takeover of the largest transport company in the region was liquidated. To achieve their goals and influence the investigation, the bandits tried to kill one of the leaders of the investigative unit of the Vladivostok Internal Affairs Directorate. Before that they killed his father. The deputy head of the registration service was mutilated with a piece of metal pipe.

At the beginning of the year, some heads of the country's law enforcement agencies tried to convince the public that raiding would decrease, allegedly because mafia structures ran out of money during the crisis. In turn, legislators pinned great hopes on amendments to the legislation regulating economic relations. What do we end up with? The laws “On Joint Stock Companies”, “On the Securities Market”, and a number of other regulations have been amended. But raiding has not gone away. According to the operational services of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, up to 90 percent of all economic structures in Moscow and St. Petersburg are under development by the mafia.

In addition, the crisis has given rise to completely new forms of raiding, which are in no way affected by changes in legislation. We are talking about the spread of new forms of property seizure with the participation of banks. This is facilitated by overdue debts and non-payments on loans. A study conducted by the National Anti-Corruption Committee suggests that the lack of liquidity of borrowers and the inability to quickly refinance create conditions for managers of a number of banks and representatives of organized crime behind them to twist the arms of borrowers and carry out operations to illegally seize property. The scheme of such grips is quite simple. The client receives a loan against liquid collateral, and then the bank uses various methods to arrange for the borrower to go into artificial default and ultimately bankrupt the company. After this, he calmly sells off the client’s assets. In addition, many cases have been recorded where banks create artificial obstacles to timely repayment of loans in order to then use legitimate models of alienation of collateral. At the same time, cases of seizure of property through the purchase of debts with subsequent bankruptcy of enterprises have become more frequent.

Now from high stands there are calls to create special structures to combat raiding. But the question arises: who needed to liquidate the units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the fight against organized crime, which were now supposed to lead the fight against raiding, in September last year at the very peak of the crisis?

Numbers

280 billion rubles - the cost of objects that fell under raider seizure (in 2006)

60-70 thousand raider attacks are carried out in the Russian Federation annually

352 criminal cases were initiated against raiders in 2008. Of these: 189 were investigated, 80 were completed, 52 were sent to court, 28 were terminated, 109 were suspended.

The crisis is not a hindrance for the raiders