Karen Dawisha

"[A] rich... hybrid combination of Chekists, mobsters, and officials in bureaucratic positions of power existed throughout the USSR... Putin was at the nexus of these three worlds: ...[A] former ...employee, "Nikolay" ...claims ...he was approached by his superior ...1990 to be part of the following scheme:...a new clandestine structure ...Your personnel files will be removed ...No one will ...know your past. ...you will ...work for the Fatherland. Against those who want to destroy it. ...I worked ...cleaning up the archives of the . ...hundreds of [files] removed. Including ...Putin. After the failed coup of 91... as the chief financial officer ...on behalf of the KGB. ...Money ...and more money. ...in one offshore paradise or another. We... were moving millions and millions of dollars into bank vaults. ....along those same channels ...money from organized crime ...I would not be able to tell which monies belonged to the KGB and which to the mafia. In response to ...questions, they responded: just move the damn money. And I did."

"No action was more symbolic of the intention of the group around Putin... than the registration... 1996, of the Ozero Dacha Consumer Cooperative... establishing... Vladimir Smirnov as its leader. ...[O]ther members ...Nikolay Shamalov, Vladimir Putin, , Yuriy Kovalchuk, Viktor Myachin, ...Sergey ...and ...Andrey Fursenko. ...This group ...stayed by Putin throughout his ...period in office, and ...all made hundreds of millions and... billions of dollars. ...[A] cooperative... is a... way for Putin to avoid being given money directly, while enjoying... wealth shared among co-owners. ... Smirnov had long been "closely linked with the well-known mafia businessman Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin).""

"Putin... 1991... was made head of the supervisory council overseeing the... gambling industry in St. Petersburg. ...[H]ow did the city become a majority owner in... [that] gaming industry in St. Petersburg? ..."by relinquishing the right to collect rent for the facilities that the s occupied," the city could claim 51 percent ownership ...[E]stablishing a joint stock company called Neva Chance, which... went on to create over twenty-five different [gambling industry] companies ...many ...headed by ex-FSB officials ..."

"My basic argument is... Putin, as deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg worked with the mafia to make their activities legal. He was in a position within the government to provide license and registrations... for items going out... and coming into the country. He sent, over his signature, Tambov mafia leaders as members of cultural delegations to Germany. ...[I]n Saint Petersburg ...White Nights was a mafia front ...[F]rom the very beginning there were people involved with cultural exchanges... gambling [etc.,]... very close to Putin who were using their position for [cross-border exchanges of] goods and services... [E]ven in 1991-92 that border wasnt open for people who had a criminal record. So he verified for their applications for visas that they had no criminal record."

"Spanish... officials... having intercepted ..."hundreds" of phone calls ...about [Gennady Nikolaevich] Petrovs "immense power... political connections... [and] criminal activity in Russia ...directed from Spain....Troika mafia leaders invoked ...names of senior ...[Russian] officials to assure ...illicit deals would proceed ..." ...[I]n 1990 with the purchase ...of ...[a] Hotel in , Majorca ...with Leningrad Communist Party and funds ...Petrov was able to host ...notables, including ...mayor , Putin’s boss. Reznik... and... wife... were co-owners of... companies with... Petrov and , also arrested on suspicion of , , and the establishment of a criminal structure that traded in , , and murder ...traced back to ...the monopoly ...given by the St. Petersburg government to the Tambov criminal organization in ...gasoline in the 1990s."

"Shamalov... was hired by Putin in 1993. The conflict of interest was massive. Kolesnikov... described... [Dmitri] Gorelov... director of Petromed, ordering medical equipment; Shamalov... representative of , delivering the equipment... a good friend of Putin, with whom he went on to found... .... Kolesnikov said, "When Shamalov came to us with a proposal... we understood... this was... directly from Vladimir Vladimirovich." Gorelov believed that... Putin’s KVS... provided the "roof" to protect against... organized crime. When Vladimir Yakovlev became governor of St. Petersburg... the relationship... [with] Petromed... soured, and Gorelov and Kolesnikov bought... the citys stake... They became major shareholders in Bank Rossiya, purchased a stake in s, and by the mid-2000s were... in the Russia... richest Russians. Kolesnikov... ultimately became a whistleblower... [claiming] diversion of funds... to build ".""