Echo of the "port" war

In St. Petersburg, a colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was detained, who may be involved in the ten custom -made murders, including journalist Maxim Maksimov

On May 31, retired police colonel Mikhail Smirnov was arrested in St. Petersburg. As follows from the message of the Investigative Committee in St. Petersburg, he is suspected of organizing a car explosion with businessmen in 1998. The sources of New Europe are sure that this accusation is only the beginning of a high -profile investigation. Smirnov can be accused of at least a dozen murders, including journalist Maxim Maximov, who disappeared without a trace in the fall of 2004.

In the message of the IC of the Russian Federation for St. Petersburg, the surname of the arrested is not called. Only some details of the crime are given in the commission of which the detainee is suspected. On June 15, 1998, a car was blown up on the road to the Turukhtan Islands near St. Petersburg. The arrested with the accomplices changed into the shape of the traffic police officers, stopped the car with the victims, distracted the driver's attention and put an explosive device under the driver's seat. As a result of the explosion, the driver died, and two passengers were seriously injured. The press service of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, also not naming the surname of the detainee, said that the deceased was the director of the ship mechanic. Well, then it was necessary to just recall the events of the 26-year ago, more precisely, the bloody gang war for the seaport of St. Petersburg, to establish the name of the deceased and assume who could be the customer of that crime.

Barbetta case

In the 90s, a real war unfolded around the small Stevorian company Barbalett, which worked in the seaport of St. Petersburg. Therefore, the “Barbaletta case” became a landmark in some way: the synonym for the bloody battle of criminal groups for control over the activities of the seaport. About how this war began and why Barbaletta was in the very center of this battle, the author in 2018 was told by a direct participant in those events Alexander Efimov.

Help "New-Europe". Alexander Efimov was born in 1958 in Leningrad. In his youth he attended a sports school in the Krasnogvardeisky district, was engaged in freestyle wrestling. At the same time, Evgeny Prigozhin, who was engaged in biathlon, visited the same school. In the mid-80s, he worked in Bath No. 25, which was considered elite in those days and loved to visit it as “workshops”, beginner racketeers and adherents of thieves' traditions, and high ranks of the Leningrad police. Efimov, who was listed in the bathhouse as a locksmith, was actually a kind of administrator. For which he received the nickname Fima Banchik. It is considered one of the co -founders of the Tambov criminal community (head - Vladimir Barsukov/Kumarin), but was not recognized as such.

After the collapse of the USSR, one of the first among the leaders of criminal groups was organized by a private security company Scorpio, which “roofed” of businessmen on an almost legal basis.

At the end of 1996, he was accused of extorting the shares of Lenrybprom (he had on his balance not only his own berths in the port, but also the fishing fleet). In 1999, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, he was released in the early 2000s and did not fall into criminal reports until 2018.

“We went to the St. Petersburg port in the mid-90s as a security structure,” said Efimov. - In Lenrybprom, then there was a complete nasty: they did not pay the workers to workers, and they dragged everything that was not welded from the port. We quickly stopped this, but we had to work. “Barbaletta” then already existed, at Lenrybprom the room for the office rented. They rented 200 meters of the mooring wall, near which the ships became unloading. Then Volodya was supervised by the wheel, he is a boxer, from Ukraine. His team was hard, they were not afraid of blood, and the headquarters at the Karelia Hotel was located. In the 96th year, two guys from the FSB came to the company (I will not give their surnames, but one at that time was still an operating employee) who decided to develop Barbaletta. They tried to rent a part of the mooring wall, which Lenrybprom belonged. I was not opposed, and it seemed at first I agreed, but then everything changed dramatically. The wheel decided to get out of the case and become legal, then everything spun.

Efimov did not specify the name of Vladimir the Wheel. But, according to the newspaper Versia, it could be the future municipal deputy Vladimir Kolesnik, whose brother Leonid for a long time was the head of the Tokasovsky city settlement. As Efimov explained, “teams” (as rackets from athletes called organized criminal groups) often exchanged those from whom they received a tribute. And this did not always happen through a bloody redistribution - they often just agreed. Here is the wheel, when he decided to completely go into the legal business, he transferred his “wards” to “Malyshevsky”-members of the Malyshevsky criminal community, who until the mid-90s held leading positions in “gangster in St. Petersburg”.

“Then Vyacheslav Serikov appeared,” said Efimov. - He belonged to the "Malyshevsky", oversaw the Baltic Sudomekhany Plant (BSMZ). After Sasha Malyshev escaped from Russia, and his empire fell apart, the team of Serikov under costume the grave left (Konstantin Yakovlev, the leader of the Ggilov OPS, was killed in May 2003). The Barbaletta mooring wall was rented from the plant, here the company from the wheel moved to Serikov. The children from the FSB did not like the “roof” change, they tried to completely get rid of monthly payments, but in those days it was difficult ...

No body - no case ...

Earlier, we already wrote how in November 1997 the director of Barbetta Igor Trofimov was shot from machine guns. This was not the first murder in the seaport of St. Petersburg, but it was with it that the bloody series of deaths that pursued businessmen who worked in the port began. On June 15, 1998, in the car, which was blown up on the road to the Turukhtani Islands, the right hand of Vyacheslav Serikov Mikhail Pyatov died. Then followed the first attempt on the former member of the organized crime group Vyacheslav Ivanov in August 1998. Most likely, it was Ivanova that Serikov considered the organizer of the explosion.

In 1999, an attempt was again made on Ivanov, after which he went to the police and handed over the entire group. Serikov and three other members of the organized crime group were arrested. But in February 2003, the Leningrad City Court fully acquitted them. Serikov was killed in October 2005, another hero of those events, the full -time killer of the group Alexander Druzhinin, nicknamed the Druzhik , continued his activities, in the end sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, in 2022 he concluded a contract with PMCs and went to fight.

“The explosion of Pyatov’s car was a“ response ”to the murder of Trofimov, about which we had information almost immediately after the incident,” the former employee of the Office for Combating Organized Crime, Alexei K., told “Novy-Europe”-in those days such cases were not particularly investigated, some bandits killed others, only the air became cleaner. Some investigative actions were carried out, including checked the traffic police employees for possible involvement in the murder, but this version did not find confirmation.

So although we knew the motive and possible customers, the contractor was not installed. Therefore, the case went to dust in the undisclosed.

The name of the car arrested in the case of the explosion of the car in 1998 almost immediately after his arrest was reported by Fontanka: a former employee of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the North-Western Federal District Mikhail Smirnov. It was his employees of the agency of journalistic investigations (openwork) suspected of involvement in the disappearance of journalist Odzhur Maxim Maksimov in 2004.

“Max Maksimov disappeared on June 29, 2004,” said former Odnhura employee Roman Lebedev. -About a month and a half before the loss, he received information from his source that police officers are related to the redistribution in the port of the late 90s. Then it was not about murders, but about custom -made criminal cases. He began to "dig" in this direction. When Max disappeared, we immediately realized that his disappearance may be associated with this particular investigation. Zhenya Zashenkov (the deputy director of the openwork, a former police officer) raised all his connections, strained the sources both in the police and criminal environment, and used all the resources of the openwork. The work was done gigantic, but he calculated those who were guilty of death (and we were already sure that Max was not alive at the stage of our investigation). But the body was never found. Well, without a body, as you know, there is no case.

The fact that Mikhail Smirnov was involved in the disappearance of Maxim Maksimov, the publication of the openwork (Fontanka.ru, the newspaper “Your Privy Counselor”, the magazine “City”) was first spoke after the arrest of Smirnov and his two subordinates in the 6th (anti-corruption) department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the North-Western Federal District in 2005. Then the police were accused of falsifying evidence and abuse of office. But in November 2007, the jury fully justified Smirnov and his subordinates, and they returned to their places, continuing to "fight corruption."

After another 17 years, two witnesses appeared at St. Petersburg, who talked about the events of 1998. Surnames of witnesses are kept in the strict confidence. Therefore, even assuming that they can still tell is still difficult. Like that, whether the detainee will be charged with the disappearance of Maxim Maximov, whose body has not yet been found.

“After the Banner and a couple of his people“ landed ”(arrested and condemned), we didn’t leave the port,” the former foreman of the Tambov OPS told New Europe on the basis of anonymity. - The battle for the port was just beginning. We did not climb into the Great Swara, but the situation around Barbaletta tracked.

In the 97th year, we became aware that the former Ephesians who came to the company decided to create a “red” roof, that is, protection from current law enforcement officials.

When Pyatov’s car exploded, in which Serikov was, but he only wounded, in our midst the opinion that they (“red roof”) were able to. And it was even known that employees of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the north-west were involved in the explosion. But who exactly, we did not know, and did not seek to find out. In the end, the "Serikovites" were "Mogilov", with whom we had already established relations then established. So the losses in their ranks were only in our hands. But Kulibaba (Vladimir Kulibaba, was considered the right hand of the bone of the grave, was currently arrested on suspicion of organizing the murder of 1993), as far as I know, then tried to excavate who sent the “answer” for Trofimov. I will not be surprised if it was he, in order to facilitate his own fate, Smirnov and handed over. In any case, such rumors go in our environment.

Now Mikhail Smirnov is 60 years old. A few years ago, he retired and worked in the security service of a large enterprise. He completely denies his guilt. During the court hearing, as the arrest or something else) looked completely calm, said that in the 98th he was too busy putting several officials at once to be distracted by such “nonsense” as organizing explosions of cars. The defense said that the detainee has a minor child, and asked to send him under house arrest. The court took the position of the investigation and arrested Smirnov until July 29, 2024.