“Chechen advice notes” is an unsolved crime. "Chechen advice notes" Chechen advice notes

He who pays the money calls the tune. This well-known truth reveals the true masterminds of the crimes of the Dudayev regime: Moscow regularly and generously gave money to Ichkeria. Gave directly, through free supplies of resources and goods, through all sorts of “benefits” and encouragement of criminal activities

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This is what the Parliamentary Commission to study the causes and circumstances of the crisis situation in the Chechen Republic found out regarding the financing of the Dudayev regime.

« Having recognized the presidential elections in Chechnya as illegal, the federal authorities nevertheless continued to finance this republic. Periodically, significant amounts of cash arrived from the Ministry of Finance to Ichkeria. So in March 1992, 150 million rubles in cash were delivered to Grozny from Russia. In August of the same year, a new portion of cash in the amount of 500 million rubles arrived in Chechnya from Moscow.

At the end of 1992, the Prime Minister of Chechnya came to Moscow Ya. Mamadayev, and we were already talking about 2.5 billion rubles. And at the beginning of April 1993, this money begins to flow into Grozny ... »

Naturally, Dudayev and his government did not give anyone any reports on how the federal money transferred to Ichkeria was spent. The commission could not even find out who exactly was the recipient of the amounts coming from Moscow to Grozny. Egor Timurovich Gaidar, who was acting at that time. The Chairman of the Government of Russia, told members of the Parliamentary Commission that the money was allegedly transferred to the rector of Grozny University (?!).

However Mukhadi Shakhidovich Israilov, who headed (after the kidnapping and murder of the former rector of CHIGU Victor Abramovich Kan-Kalik) Grozny University, assured the Commission that it did not receive any federal money.

Another direction of official financing of the illegal regime Dudaeva- transfer of funds from the Russian pension fund, allegedly for the payment of pensions in Chechnya. Despite reliable information about massive non-payment of pensions in the republic, financing of Ichkeria from the pension fund continued until March 1994, and during this time more than 2.5 billion rubles were transferred to Grozny.

In addition to direct federal funding, significant sums in rubles and US dollars came to Ichkeria from (commercial) banks. Thus, Kredobank transferred 1,350 thousand US dollars to Chechnya in the first half of 1994 alone (amid the deterioration of relations between Moscow and Grozny). In general, as the flow of funds into Ichkeria from the federal budget decreased, private banks took on an increasingly active role in financing the criminal Dudayev regime. Money was transferred to Chechnya by such large banks as Stolichny, Menatep, Rossiyskiy Kredit, Most Bank, Alfa Bank, Avtovazbank, etc.

The Central Bank of Russia knew about this activity of commercial banks, but did not lift a finger to stop the financing of the criminal Dudayev regime. Now it is difficult to say what motives guided the heads of commercial banks and the Central Bank of Russia, who established close business cooperation with the separatists from Grozny, but financial assistance to the government of Ichkeria continued even when hostilities began on the territory of Chechnya.

The apotheosis of financial support for Ichkeria can be considered the operation of exchanging Soviet money for the new Russian currency. The former Soviet republics also participated in this operation. So, in 1993, on March 20 and 21, a total of 18.2 tons of Soviet money withdrawn from circulation in Estonia were delivered on two planes from Tallinn to Grozny under the guise of diplomatic mail. Grozny successfully exchanged this money for the new Russian currency. Supplies of old Soviet money to Grozny, for their subsequent exchange for Russian ones, were also carried out from other republics of the former USSR - from Latvia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, etc.

Another powerful source of funds was numerous financial actions with false advice notes and the production of counterfeit Russian and foreign money. According to the testimony of some people who left Grozny in 1993–1994, counterfeit US dollars were openly sold at the Central Market. Here is a sketch from the testimony:

« There are two signs on the food counter in the market aisles. On one of them there is the inscription “Real dollars” and figures of the exchange rate, on the other sign there is the inscription “Fake dollars” and figures of the exchange rate, half that for “real” dollars. Behind the counter is a middle-aged Chechen woman selling dollars, real and fake. Exchange office in Ichkerian design».

There is evidence that counterfeiting in Ichkeria was placed on a state “basis”. From Chechnya, counterfeit rubles and dollars reached various regions of Russia, and the income from this criminal enterprise went to the accounts of functionaries of the Dudayev regime.

The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that “... Criminal groups of Chechens from among Dudayev's supporters launched active efforts to forge money and bank documents, which caused significant damage to the Russian financial system. Over the past three years, the largest center for the production of counterfeit money and false financial documents has formed on the territory of the republic. In 1993, counterfeit banknotes worth 9.4 billion rubles were seized in the Russian Federation, of which 3.7 billion rubles were related to cases with the direct or indirect participation of persons of Chechen nationality...
Basically, counterfeit money was printed in the Leninsky district of Grozny, Shalinsky, Urus-Martan districts of the republic, and then through an extensive network of intermediaries in large quantities they were launched into payment circulation in Russia and other CIS member countries .

Of course, the production of counterfeit money is a criminal enterprise, and the state rarely acts as a customer or patron of counterfeiting. However, there is testimony from former law enforcement officials that the Chechen emissaries detained in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod were released along with the “product” of counterfeit dollars and Deutschmarks and returned safely to Ichkeria. Is this the result of corruption in the “authorities” or the intervention of high-ranking patrons of Dudayev in the Russian Federation? The author of these lines does not have a clear answer to this question.

Another criminal activity was promotions with fake advice notes. According to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, “ with the active participation of Chechen criminal groups, cash thefts were organized using credit memos and Rossiya checks in the amount of about 4 trillion rubles.

In 1992, Russian internal affairs bodies opened 617 criminal cases on facts of theft in the banking system, including 170 on facts of theft using advice notes. In 1993, 1556 and 791, respectively, and in 1994 - about 4 thousand and more than 1 thousand ».

It is easy to see the dynamics of the growth of thefts in the banking system, including with the help of advice notes. And this is seen not just as negligence or incompetence of employees of the banking system - here there is an obvious conspiracy with criminals who were hiding after committing crimes on the territory of “sovereign” Ichkeria.

And, as the Parliamentary Commission stated, “ A negative role here was played by the Central Bank of Russia, which created a new financial structure: the cash settlement center (RCC). Due to this intermediate link, which acted as a “black box,” the visible connection between the real sender of money and its recipient was broken».

Of course, this golden shower that fell on the leadership of the Chechen Republic was not simple charity from the “democrats” from the Russian government. The lion's share of the Dudayev regime's income returned to Moscow into the accounts of future multimillionaires and billionaires. Factories and mines, oil fields and real estate in the capital and other Russian cities were bought for this money.

A major source of both ruble and foreign currency income for the Dudayev regime was oil and petroleum products. Chechnyareceived billions of US dollars from the sale of oil and petroleum products abroad in 1991–1994 . The Parliamentary Commission found out the following.

Novogroznensky Oil Refinery named after. Anisimova, late 1980s

According to data available to the Commission, Grozny factories received the following for processing:
– 15 million tons (of which Grozny - 3.9 million tons) in 1991;
– 9.7 million tons (of which 3.2 million tons were from Grozny) in 1992;
– 3.5 million tons (of which 2.4 million tons were from Grozny) in 1993;
– 2.98 million tons (of which 1.2 million tons were from Grozny) in 1994.

At the same time, a significant share of “external” oil accounted for oil from Western Siberia.

Despite the direct financial damage, no decisions on a special regime for working with the oil and gas complex of the Chechen Republic were made either at the government or at the presidential level. Moreover, at the meeting of the two ministers of fuel and energy - Chernomyrdina V.S.(from the Russian Federation) and Durdieva Z.(from Ichkeria), held on July 6, 1992, the Russian side not only did not make any claims, but issues of further “cooperation” and the conclusion of international treaties were actively considered.

According to official data from the Ministry of Fuel and Energy, the supply of Stavropol oil to Grozny was stopped only in August 1993, and from Dagestan only in November 1994, that is, less than a month before the start of hostilities in Chechnya.

One of the supporters of cooperation between the federal government and the separatists of Ichkeria in the oil business was Yegor Timurovich Gaidar, who gave the following testimony to the Commission:

« The Grozny Oil Refinery is the largest oil refinery in Russia, supplying (with petroleum products) a significant part of the North Caucasus, Stavropol Territory, Krasnodar Territory and so on. In this regard, turning off the oil tap at once meant, at the very least, leaving these regions without fuel for the sowing season, which would severely punish not only Chechnya, but Russia too».

In fact, oil products from Chechnya did not go to the national economic complexes of the regions of the North Caucasus, but to various commercial structures established by Dudayev’s accomplices. Such as, for example, the trading house “Mansur”, the joint venture “Mudges”, the self-supporting association “Protos”, the charitable (!) company “Zakat”, the poultry farms “Pyatigorskaya” and “Zelenokumskaya”, etc.

At the same time, a significant part of the oil and petroleum products was exported. And the exporter was not Russia, but Chechnya! The decision to allocate export quotas was made at the highest government level; that is why Dudayev made such a request directly to the acting director. Chairman of the Russian Government Yegor Gaidar. From the certificate of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy it follows that export quotas were regularly issued in 1992, 1993, and 1994, and in 1994 there were 65 thousand tons more than in 1993. The countries receiving oil and petroleum products were Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, the Baltic countries, and Türkiye.

In addition, taking advantage of the corruption of officials of federal departments, the Chechen side actively used the following schemes for illegal oil exports:

1. Re-export of oil to third countries from the CIS and Baltic republics.
2 . Export of oil as a returnable (“toll-provided”) raw material, which, according to “convenient” rules, was not subject to customs registration. But after processing, the resulting oil products were no longer returned to Russia and were sold to third countries, and payment for the oil went to Chechnya.
3. Direct smuggling due to the “imperfection” of departmental rules, as well as the very convenient transparency of borders within the former Soviet Union.

For domestic consumption, theft of oil and petroleum products through illegal tapping into pipelines was widely used.

How was the final stage – receiving money – carried out? According to the testimony of officials, for the convenience of the recipient (Chechnya), the Central Bank of Russia already in June 1992 stopped settlements with the Chechen National Bank, thereby making the passage of financial funds to Chechnya completely uncontrolled. Various commercial structures were actively involved in the matter, willingly performing intermediary functions between the sender (Chechnya) and the recipient of oil products. And here we meet the same banks “Stolichny”, “Menatep”, “Russian Credit”, “Most Bank”, “Alfa Bank”, “Avtovazbank”, etc., which we have already talked about in connection with “ direct" financing of the Dudayev regime. According to the Minister of the Chechen Republic Z. Durdieva, the money received from these transactions was concentrated in the Chechen National Bank.

NOTE EDITORS:Theft of money using “fake advice notes” amounting to more than 3 trillion. rubles is confirmed by the Head of the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime, First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia M. Egorov(Segodnya newspaper, 01/28/1994).

What could you buy with this huge money in those days?

Remember the famous vouchers that were given to every Russian citizen free of charge and which were redeemed in suitcases to carry out “privatization”.

As of October 1, 1992, the Government of the Russian Federation under the control E.T. Gaidar estimated the country's national wealth - the assets of all state-owned enterprises - at 4 trillion. rub. Vouchers worth 1.5 trillion. rub. (35% of the national wealth) was intended for free distribution to 150 million citizens of the Russian Federation. Each was given a voucher worth 10 thousand rubles. Taking into account that they were sold at a higher price - an amount equivalent to the cost of all vouchers, and was stolen as a result of the most ambitious scam in the entire history of the world banking system with “fake advice notes” by E. Gaidar and his comrades.

Note that E.T. Gaidar served as Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation from June 15 to December 15, 1992. On July 1, 1992, the exchange rate was 125 rubles/$1. On December 1, 1992, it was already 447 rubles/$1. Ruble inflation for six months was about 358%. And suddenly, on December 2, 1992, the fall of the ruble suddenly stopped and the ruble exchange rate stabilized. Moreover, the ruble grew by 7% in one day, and 1 dollar became worth 417 rubles. instead of 447 rub.

What could have caused this?

The crime was successfully doing business: stolen rubles were exchanged for dollars and back. Undoubtedly, part of the money went to strengthen the “Chechen offshore”, and the bulk of the stolen money went to “agents of maldor reformers” to purchase vouchers, with the help of which these criminals bought up the entire industry of Russia... (see. A. Klepov, "Chechen advice note..." )

Thus, the movement of funds received from the sale of oil and petroleum products was not controlled by the Russian government, and, consequently, profits were not subject to taxes. And huge “oil money” in rubles and foreign currency went to strengthen Dudayev’s criminal regime.

It should be noted here that in many oil companies, such as Sibneft, Lukoil, Yukos, Surgut Neftegaz, Sidanco, Atlas, etc. Chechens and Ingush, one way or another connected with the Dudayev regime, worked in significant and even key positions. The Chechens, in particular, carried out “mediation” and “security” functions.

As I wrote Pavel Khlebnikov, killed in Moscow for his investigative journalism: “ In the conditions of the commercial market that existed in Russia in the 90s, any big business had its own armed groups, they protected the owners, intimidated competitors, and attacked them if necessary. This is the source of all the rampant violence and crime in post-communist Russia. People did not respect the laws of the state, and they simply did not have time to come to an agreement among themselves. The result was general confusion and massacre...».

And in these gangster fights of the emerging “elite of Russian democracy,” an important role was played by Chechen militants, who enjoyed special protection from the federal government. The most famous, iconic example of such “security services” of Chechen bandits is their cooperation with LogoVAZ Boris Berezovsky. In the already mentioned book by Khlebnikov we read: “ According to Russian law enforcement agencies, it was the Chechens who defended Berezovsky’s interests in the confrontation with other gangster groups. Several Chechen names are known to be part of the LogOVAZ security service in the early 90s, among them - Magomed Ismailov, who oversees the company's security issues. Although it was known that it was Ismailov who resolved most of the problems with bandits, he was never brought to justice. The history of interaction between the Chechen mafia and the LogoVAZ company remains vague to this day.…».

If we take into account the influence that Boris Berezovsky had in the power structures of the Russian Federation and his closeness with Boris Yeltsin, then the role of the alliance between Ichkeria and the Kremlin in the formation of the “democratic regime” in Russia becomes clear.

And here it is appropriate to recall the statement of Dzhokhar Dudayev to the Turkish newspaper “Milliyet”, which we have already cited above:

« (Question)– You say that Russia needs to be neutralized. But they say that in Moscow all big business is in the hands of Chechen businessmen. Is it true that the entire economy in Moscow is run by Chechens?
(Dudaev)– Yes, we have such influence. You should also pay attention to this. Russians are a primitive people. Only after the Chechens have done their job, the Russians begin to act... In fact, our mafia is good! »

Why were the Chechens able to conquer Moscow? Khlebnikov asks in the book “Conversation with a Barbarian” cited above. And he answers with the words of a RUBOP employee. "... It's not about strength of character, it's not about strength of will or the strength of their values... They acted by raiding. Here is a Chechen “authority” sitting in Moscow and saying: I need to select these businessmen for myself. He calls relatives or friends from Chechnya: come here, here and here, and then I will protect you. They ran over, vandalized, killed someone and left. And who should we (the police - P.Kh.) look for? Who can we get out of Chechnya? No one. And the people realize this.

But the courage of the Chechens manifests itself only when there are many of them. When a Chechen shows that he is on a horse and behaves harshly and rudely, it means that someone is behind him. And whoever is behind him can influence the police, the prosecutor’s office, anyone, so that this bandit is not touched, despite the fact that there are all grounds for arrest, for opening a case. This is where all the heroism of the Chechens comes from …».

Many articles and even books have been written about the methods by which Chechen militants, with the support of the federal government, captured the Russian capital. And we do not want to retell here various episodes of the gang wars of the 90s in Russia. This is beyond our scope. But to illustrate the atmosphere of terror created with the “blessing” of the authorities, we will cite only one fragment from the same book by Khlebnikov: “ In 1988, this group - Nukhaev, Atlangeriev, Lobzhanidze(Gena Shram) and Gelani Akhmadov- committed one crime. They took two businessmen into the forest. Nukhaev and his team dug a hole and buried one with his head, and they told the second: “If you dig him up alive, you’ll pay twice, but if you dig him up dead, you’ll pay one for two.” This is such a mockery... “Dig better so that he is alive.” Well, he dug him up alive, of course.».

Criminal terror, in which the Kremlin’s alliance with gangs from the “national” republics played an important role, was supposed to prepare and then accompany the collapse of the Soviet Union in order to give the wealth accumulated by the people into the hands of the new “democratic” owners of the fragments of the Great Empire. And naturally, the edge of this terror was directed against the state-forming Russian people, holding together the thousand-year-old power with living flesh. On the outskirts of the empire, “national” terror took the form of ethnic cleansing and the scale of genocide. In the central regions - racketeering, contract killings (commercial and political), arms and drug trafficking, involvement in prostitution and the porn industry, including minors, hostage-taking and slave trade, etc.

The Parliamentary Commission to study the causes and circumstances of the crisis situation in the Chechen Republic stated:

« Favorable conditions of impunity on the part of the federal authorities contributed to the formation of a free economic zone of a criminal nature on the territory of Chechnya. The main components of this zone were:
– duty-free import and export of goods;
– illegal trade in petroleum products;
– illegal arms trade;
– drug smuggling;
– extortion from businessmen in Russia and abroad;
– speculation on the Russian financial market.

Well-established shuttle bus and air routes to the countries of the Middle East, Western and Eastern Europe (up to 150 flights per month) made it possible to import a huge amount of goods duty-free and then sell them duty-free in Russia.

Was it possible for the authorities to block the uncontrolled flow of duty-free goods pouring into the Russian market? Yes it was. It was enough to introduce a border regime between Chechnya and the Stavropol Territory. But this was not done, despite the huge financial losses for the Russian economy. It seems that the personal benefit of government officials and the profits of commercial structures outweighed the state interests of Russia ».

On our own behalf, we will also add that the transparency of the border between Chechnya and neighboring regions was needed by the Kremlin in order to promptly transfer militant detachments to Moscow in the event of an undesirable development of the political situation to protect “democracy” and the first democratic president of Russia. This was done to the necessary extent during the tragic events in the fall of 1993. And for the sake of this “friendly help” of the separatists and the “security activities” of the Chechen bandits, the Kremlin was ready to forgive the expansion of organized ethnic crime, regardless of any losses for the country’s economy.

« Chechnya under Dudayev became a hotbed of crime, we read in the materials of the joint editorial office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, which began to actively spread throughout all regions of the country. According to the Main Information Center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, as of December 1, 1994, 1,201 people of Chechen nationality were put on the federal wanted list for committing crimes, including 64 people in Moscow, 15 in St. Petersburg, and in the Stavropol Territory – 83, in the Rostov region – 38, etc.

The Chechens began to commit terrorist acts involving hostage-taking and aircraft hijacking. They committed the first such crime in October 1991, then in March 1992, and in December 1993. And by October 1994, in Rostov-on-Don and at the airports of Mineralnye Vody and Makhachkala, they had already captured four planes...

Criminals of other nationalities who committed terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus and other regions of the country, including those related to the taking of hostages and aircraft, also began to find refuge on the territory of Chechnya. On March 27, 1992, an armed group of Adyghe captured police officers and a brigade of workers from the Ministry of Water Affairs, putting forward demands for the release of accomplices arrested in Armavir from custody and the provision of an airplane and crew to fly to Turkey. Later they found refuge in Chechnya, where they did not suffer any punishment and were free...

Every month, up to 150 unauthorized foreign flights were made from Grozny airport without any control. In fact, any cargo, any criminal, arriving in Chechnya from anywhere in Russia and the CIS, could easily fly to any country where no one would find him...”

A similar picture of the criminal lawlessness emanating from the sovereign Ichkeria (or from an equal subject of the Russian Federation?) is given to us by the materials of the Parliamentary Commission to study the causes and circumstances of the crisis situation in the Chechen Republic:

“Significant financial damage was caused to Russia due to the direct robbery of the Grozny branch of the North Caucasus Railway. In 1991, 559 trains were attacked, with about 4,000 wagons and containers worth 11.5 billion rubles being completely or partially looted. Over eight months of 1994, 120 armed attacks were carried out, as a result of which 1,156 wagons and 527 containers were looted. Losses amounted to more than 11 billion rubles. In 1992 - 1994, 26 railway workers died during train robberies.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Chechen criminal groups have practically monopolized the illegal drug market in many regions of Russia and, first of all, in the Far East, Moscow, Pskov, St. Petersburg and other large cities of Russia.

The Shalinsky district of Chechnya was of key importance in the drug business, where until January 1995 the main production and technical base operated for the production of a potent drug - high-quality heroin, its packaging, packaging and storage in existing warehouses. The drug was sold throughout Russia and abroad through Libya, Yemen, Romania, the Baltic states, Abkhazia and Azerbaijan.

Criminal money successfully supported the criminal regime of Chechnya, which was increasingly strengthened under the cover of federal power. Its financial and military power increased ».

At the same time, the federal government directly armed the Chechen militants, which we will discuss below in more detail. And here we will note another aspect of the financing of the criminal Dudayev regime. This aspect is perhaps the most cynical and directly related to our topic. Fraud with “advice notes”, trade in petroleum products, racketeering and other criminal activities on the road – all these sources of enrichment were in the hands of a fairly narrow group of people in rebellious Ichkeria. But what about ordinary militants - the main support of the Dudayev regime? They were given over to the Russian-speaking population of Chechnya and the adjacent regions - Ingushetia, Dagestan, Stavropol Territory, where Chechen militants carried out raids for the purpose of robberies and seizing slaves and hostages for ransom.

As stated by the Parliamentary Commission for the Study of the Causes and Circumstances of the Crisis Situation in the Chechen Republic, the main objects of desire for the bandits were houses, apartments, and cars. In addition, money, livestock, and other property were taken from Russian residents of Chechnya and adjacent territories. According to approximate calculations of a member of the Parliamentary Commission, deputy M. Burlakova, who was responsible in the Commission for investigating violations of the rights of citizens on the territory of Chechnya, in the period from 1991 to 1994, more than one hundred thousand apartments and households were taken away from Russian and Russian-speaking residents of Chechnya.

When grief affects one person, it is a tragedy; when it affects hundreds of thousands of people, it is already a statistic. In the troubled days of the autumn of 1994 in the front-line Mozdok, the author of these lines accidentally met his former student, let’s call her Natalia. About eight years ago he wrote my thesis. I hardly recognized her, dirty, ragged, with unkempt strands of gray hair, rummaging through a trash can. Her story is typical of Russian people who found themselves in Chechen hell. In the spring of 1993, when the Chechen “democrats” were still fully collaborating with their Moscow comrades, one of the field defenders of freedom and independence of Ichkeria demanded that she give a warrant for the apartment and move to Russia. Natalya, naturally, refused to comply with this demand of the representative of the new government of Ichkeria. Then this gentleman officer of the Ichkerian army and his comrades decided to demonstratively punish the occupier. At night they paid her a visit and, without unnecessary sentimentality, shot her husband, and cut off the heads of her two children. Now, having lost her mind, the widow is looking for the heads of her children, wandering through the cities and villages of the North Caucasus. She told me that if she finds the heads that the bandits took somewhere that night, she will sew them back to the bodies of the children and they will come to life and be with her again. And to prove the seriousness of her intentions, she showed a needle and thread hidden in her rags.

Ah, gentlemen, presidents and ministers, new tycoons and generals playing politics, don’t you dream at night of a gray-haired woman wandering along a dusty road in search of her children you killed?

Another “local” source of enrichment for Dudayev’s militants, in addition to robberies, seizure of apartments and households, was the use of slave labor. The Parliamentary Commission revealed numerous facts of enslavement of Russian residents of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, as well as hostage-taking for ransom.

Here's the story Alexandra Mikheeva, who lived for a year and a half as a slave among the Chechens in a dugout, where a hole dug in the floor served as a bucket, and an armful of dirty straw served as a bed.

« In May 1993, having served in the navy, Sasha was returning home from Polyarny, to his native Ivanovka, Koshkinsky district, Samara region... Having reached the capital together with a colleague, they took tickets to their native land and decided to relax a little in the restaurant of the Kievsky railway station. Wash demobilization. Before they even had time to half the bottle of vodka, Caucasians appeared nearby.

- Ah, the Morflot is walking! We treat you on behalf of the entire Chechen people.

They supplied two bottles, brought snacks and glasses.
“He’s a strong guy,” one remarked, his golden mouth sparkling. “This is how people should work on a plantation!”

“I’m working,” Mikheev smiled. - On a tractor.

– Listen, you’re worth your weight in gold! Dzhigit!

The Chechens brought more vodka. Walk, walk like that! Alexander grabbed half a glass and seemed to fall into a black hole...

The sailor opened his eyes and found himself in a compartment on the bottom bunk. He sighed with relief, it means everything is fine, he’s going home. But why does the body hurt so much, as if it had been beaten with sticks?

– Have you come to your senses, dear? – his drinking companion from yesterday hung from the top shelf. The Chechen pulled out his Makarov and smiled:

-You are our prisoner. If you swear, I’ll be offended and shoot you.

Soon the mountaineer’s accomplices, the same thugs, appeared in the compartment. There were three of them, all had knives and pistols. We communicated in our own language. But thanks to the fact that many Russian words slipped into the conversation, Mikheev realized that he was going to Grozny. And his brother is “travelling” in the next compartment Andrey.

Everything became clear upon arrival in Grozny. Two Chechens approached them. They examined the sailor as a labor force: they tested the muscles, bent their heads. Then, after haggling, they took out the money and counted out 35 thousand rubles. The buyers were also given the documents of the demobilized sailor.

- Do you see? – one of them revealed his military ID.

- You won't see it again.

And he brought the flame of a lighter to the ticket.
In Zhiguli, where he was imprisoned, there were two more horsemen.

“It’s a good product,” one said joyfully, fiddling with his hat on his knees. “Listen and remember: if you work well, we’ll feed you, if you work poorly, we’ll cut you…”

A brigade of slaves, collected from all over the former Union, cultivated a poppy plantation. They weeded and harvested, cooked opium, then plowed and sowed and weeded again. From dawn to dusk, 18 hours a day, day after day. Every evening the hermits were executed, after which they were given a bowl of semolina soaked in water...

Then the sailor was resold to another owner, then to another.

The third time he was traded right in the center of the village. The new owner was a man of authority for the local Chechens.

“I was settled on Zavodskaya Street,” said the former sailor, “in house No. 80. The owner was a big “kurbashi” - he was in charge of a mill. He immediately told me that if I tried to escape, he would not take me back to him. He'll just kill you like a dog.

You know, I was not something unusual among the Chechens. In almost every rich house there live the same martyrs. Many of them have already despaired of returning to their former life and have been in slavery for 3-4 years.
“On the very first day,” says Alexander, “the owner brought me up to date: “Russian cattle will look after Chechen cattle.” And he laughed for a long time, pleased with his own wit. …»

And here is another testimony from the commander of one of the explosive units, which we took from a book published under the patronage of the Russian Minister of Internal Affairs, an army general Anatoly Kulikova.

« White slave in a black night. He was brought to the unit's location to be sent to the filtration point in the morning. A scourge, a homeless person, a white slave - Russian newspapers wrote about them as “prisoners of the Caucasus.” We met such people on every business trip. Fedor, from near Voronezh, had been working for his Caucasian masters since 1977; slave traders caught him in Sochi. Volodya from Makeyevka came to earn extra money at the Ingush “hacienda” last summer. He wanted to build, but he was forced to collect hemp. I happened to see a couple more on the train - a policeman accompanied them, discovered in the mountains, to the nearest police station on Russian territory in order to save them from their local former owners. These white slaves are a sad sight. “Russian pigs,” as slave owners call them, are fallen people, humiliated and insulted. There are now dozens of them at any train station, in any big or small Russian city.

We met dozens of these in the Caucasus mountains …».

For people captured in Chechnya and various regions of the Russian Federation, the kidnappers always tried to obtain a ransom from relatives and friends of the “Caucasian captives.” If the ransom could not be obtained, then the captured person became a slave and entered one of the slave markets. Such markets functioned completely openly in Grozny (on Baronovka and near Minutka Square), in Shalyakh, in Vedeno, in Shatoi and in Gekhi.

« What is a hostage? – We read in the already mentioned book by Pavel Khlebnikov. – This is a slave who can be ransomed. And the Chechens have been trading slaves for a long time. And they took slaves from themselves in Chechnya, and they took them on the border with Chechnya. I know several cases from the last war... A Chechen fighter has been in a trench for six months, and purely physiologically, he still has to somehow satisfy himself, right? And here – in the Stavropol Territory – there are women. Why not pick it up? He liked one, he will sleep with her, and then pass her on to another, and so her slavery begins.

Just think, this is not a person - this is Russian. The Chechens and rich Chechens were taken hostage, but the Russians were treated more harshly. They were selling slaves at the market in Grozny, on Minutka. Everyone knew it ».

But in addition to the “internal” slave trade in Chechnya, the export of “live goods” also flourished. " The kidnapping of children and young women with their subsequent sending to foreign countries in exchange for currency has become widespread. In this regard, the number of missing citizens has sharply increased».

The medieval savagery and cruelty of barbarians blossomed in full bloom in “free” Ichkeria. But the Moscow authorities not only turned a blind eye to the monstrous wave of crime that overwhelmed the former autonomous republic and spread from the foothills of the Caucasus throughout Russia, but also in every possible way, both morally and financially, supported the national criminal regime of Dudayev and his associates. And she armed the illegal formations of a retired Soviet general to the teeth with the latest weapons, thereby preparing a civil war - the bloodiest on the territory of the former USSR since the end of World War II.

Why the new “democratic” government in the Russian Federation needed this is a separate matter. And we will return to it, first telling how the Kremlin armed its future enemy.

to be continued…

The criminal economy has not brought the promised wealth

WHAT DID CHECHNYA LIVE ON?

...P In parallel with honest workers, doctors, artists, scientists, people from the Caucasus, who were the majority, communities of a completely different kind were formed in the Soviet Union. It was no secret to anyone that the most powerful, most cruel and aggressive criminal groups in Russian cities were precisely those from the Caucasus. And when the chaos of the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s set in, it was these mafiosi who found themselves on the crest of the wave, crushing the most profitable areas of criminal and then legal business.

FALSE ADVICE NOTES

However, even then it was clear that sooner or later the chaos would end and we had to secure our rear. And it was difficult to come up with a better home front than a homeland that was formally independent of Russia. Part of the money, and a considerable part, began to be invested in this independence. And where it was possible to do without spending on bribes, the issue was resolved by force. Weapons depots of the Soviet Army were seized, people threw themselves under tanks and columns of vehicles transporting military equipment from Russian bases, and sometimes there were direct armed seizures with the killing of Russian military personnel. Overall the plan was a success.

But at the same time, many “independent” Caucasian republics lost the main source of their existence - the Russian budget. An epiphany came. Some immediately backed down. The political elite of others managed to obtain financial and other material support from the West - for themselves personally, and not for their peoples, but this created the illusion of independence. And only one North Caucasian republic, which was not of interest to the West, and not very necessary from the point of view of the then Russian government, found itself in an international vacuum. It was beyond my strength to go back to bow to Russia, but I had to somehow live, continue to suck money from the Russian budget. And a completely unique scam was invented, which is now included in all textbooks on economic crime in all countries of the world. Scam with Chechen advice notes.

In just a couple of years of its self-proclaimed independence - 1991 and 1992 - Chechnya pulled 400 billion rubles from the pocket of gullible Russia, and in cash! Physically, this mass of money had such a volume and weight that it was taken out of Moscow banks in bags on trucks - thousands of bags. The rubles in these bags (if converted at the exchange rate of that time) were worth more than a third of a billion dollars. This money was actually taken to Chechnya on Aeroflot passenger planes and Moscow-Grozny fast trains.

Here are a few excerpts from the analytical report of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation in 1995, when people were already being killed in full swing in Chechnya.

“The dynamics of this type of crime are characterized by the following figures:

1992 - 328 cases, the damage for which amounted to over 94 billion rubles;

1993 - 469 cases. The damage amounted to 148 billion rubles;

1994 - 120 cases. The damage amounted to 175 billion rubles.

From 1992 to 1994, the investigative unit of the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation investigated 11 criminal cases involving 2,393 false advice notes worth over 113 billion rubles.

In the fake advice scam, criminals used more than four hundred mostly fictitious business and commercial bank names as senders. Cashing out of the stolen amounts was carried out with the participation of 892 banks and 1,547 enterprises located in 68 regions of the Russian Federation.

417 people were brought to criminal responsibility, of which 99 were Russians, 151 Chechens, 26 Ingush (curious, what was the nationality of another 141 swindlers? - Author). According to the GUEP program of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia “Fugitive - Bank - Fugitive”, 347 people are wanted, about whose involvement in the theft of funds using false advice notes there is operational information. 46 of those put on the wanted list are allegedly hiding in Chechnya and Ingushetia.

The largest number of thefts using false advice notes were registered in Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Republic of Dagestan, the Stavropol and Krasnodar territories, the Moscow and Tomsk regions.

The presence of a significant number of commercial structures and banks in Moscow and St. Petersburg and the lack of proper control over their activities made it easier to commit thefts and made their detection difficult.

The experience of North Caucasian criminal groups was used to commit similar crimes in the central regions of Russia and Siberia. The successes achieved by the organizers of the crimes and the receipt of significant sums from criminal activities led to the creation of stable criminal groups that began to use stolen funds to establish and finance criminal structures...”

Chechnya has become a testing ground for the international mafia for one reason only - because of its independence de facto and “dependence” de jure.

By the way, the Vainakh brothers of the Chechens - the Ingush - from the very beginning did not aggravate relations with Moscow, and now the Ingush group in Moscow, specializing in the banking business, according to operational data from the police, is the richest...

None of the Moscow financiers who in one way or another participated in the scam of the century with Chechen advice notes was a child; everyone understood perfectly well what he was doing. After all, the lion's share of this money - cash - went to bread for the Chechens, to weapons and ammunition, to the services of government officials and the media. And the Chechens bought all these goods, including journalists, not somewhere in Turkey or Jordan, but from us ourselves, in Mother Russia.

"PIPE"

After the source of free money from the Russian budget dried up, and the first Chechen war ended in the complete victory of independent Ichkeria, the leadership of the self-proclaimed republic again faced the problem of financing its independence. Now all hope was for the “pipe” - the northern route of the export pipeline (SMEP) Baku - Grozny - Novorossiysk. And, apparently, if the Chechen field commanders really (as assumed by the peace agreements) ceded power to the civilian leadership of Chechnya, then the “pipe” could be a good help for the economy of the republic. But the very first batch of oil purchased in Baku for transit to the West through Novorossiysk could not reach Novorossiysk for a year!

Along the way, the “pipe” was “served” by hundreds of distillation mini-factories belonging to various field commanders. Stolen diesel fuel and gasoline completely solved the financial problems of every field commander and his personal guard. But they could not solve the main problem of Chechnya as an independent state. An independent state must have a deficit-free budget, and if there is a deficit, the prospect of external loans or investments. Chechnya could not count on either one or the other. As a result, the Chechen leadership had no choice but to support its people in a state of permanent war. It doesn’t matter with whom, the main thing is that the war continues. Only during the war with Russia was it possible to obtain loans from abroad.

SLAVES

It only remains to add that both during the war and in peacetime, another source of income worked properly. Slave trade. Kidnapping hostages and extorting money for them. Of course, this source could not tie up the ends of the entire republican budget, but it should not be underestimated. A thousand or two hostages brought in millions of dollars. And if you consider that the entire population of Chechnya is less than a million people, about a third of whom were constantly living and feeding in Russia, then this was, in general, a good state business.

Will this end or will Russia have to bear this cross forever?

Dmitry VORONIN

On the night of August 20-21, 1991, USSR KGB officers experienced great stress. A huge crowd of people gathered in front of the committee building, eager for destruction. They hated everything - the USSR, the CPSU, socialism, the KGB, the hateful aesthetics of socialist realism, bad clothes, bad cars, closed borders, their worthless lives. These people had no plan. They wanted one thing - to break it. They believed that if they broke the monument to Dzerzhinsky right now, then tomorrow their life would become beautiful and amazing. And many more of them wanted to storm the KGB building. Actually, that’s why the organization’s employees experienced their stress - they understood that in the event of such an assault there would be very, very many victims - unlike the senseless crowd, the KGB employees knew what they would have to do. Everything worked out well then, but it is unlikely that the KGB will ever forget that insult.

In September 1991, the third year student of the Faculty of Cybernetics of the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation went to work on agricultural work at the Prioksky state farm, Serpukhov district, Moscow region. I don’t even remember what we were supposed to do there - no one gave a damn about this work. We drank, swam in the Oka, drank again, slept, and in the morning drank again. I went to the field once - there we played cards, mafia, and drank again. On the field to the left of ours, students of the first medical institute were working. They carefully selected potatoes from the beds that the potato harvester had left there. He left almost everything. On the field to the right of ours stood grown men. They didn't work. They stood all over the field in groups of 3-5 people and talked about something. These were KGB officers who were expelled from Moscow, at least for agricultural work, as long as they did not take any revenge against the embryonic Russian proto-statehood. One day, two of these employees, who lived in a neighboring pioneer camp, came to sit on our tail. Apparently, things were so bad for them that they didn’t even have enough for port wine. They drank our sevens and “white port wine”, and we talked, as usual, completely not understanding each other. The employees told us that the country was about to go to hell. And we enthusiastically proved to them that now the full splendor and many conquests of Western civilization will begin in the country. “Do you think it's over?” - one of the KGB officers asked before leaving, “Nothing is over. We will definitely be back." We laughed at the dudes and began to get ready to go to the field to steal cabbage - complete capitalism and universal happiness were soon to come.

Apparently, even then the KGB employees understood that they needed to consolidate their nuclear forces and mobilize the funds necessary to preserve the organization. Most likely, they understood this before others, before Gorbachev, the Politburo, and even before future members of the Emergency Committee. The USSR was dying. And it was clear to the elephant that Yeltsin, coming after the death of the USSR, would try to destroy the committee, fragment it and annihilate it. If only something didn't work out.

This is a conspiracy theory. Now - a conspiracy theory.

On July 13, 1990, a year before the events at Lubyanka, the State Bank of the RSFSR, reporting to the Supreme Council of the RSFSR, was created on the basis of the Russian Republican Bank of the State Bank of the USSR. Three weeks later, on August 7, 1990, a man named Grigory Gavrilovich Matyukhin was appointed acting Chairman of the Bank's Board.

Grigory Gavrilovich Matyukhin had never been a banker before. On the contrary, he was a career employee of the State Security Committee, or more precisely, the Foreign Intelligence Service of this committee.

Grigory Gavrilovich was born in 1934 in Barnaul. In 1961 he graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He worked in a residency in Uruguay, but was unsuccessful, after which he became a researcher at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences - in fact, a division of the KGB.

Three months after we drank port wine with KGB officers in a pioneer camp on the banks of the Oka River, the USSR ceased to exist. On December 20, 1991, the State Bank of the USSR was abolished. The main financial institution of the new country was the Central Bank of Russia. KGB officer Grigory Matyukhin did not have much time left to be its chairman, and during this time he had to fulfill his mission.

It was Grigory Matyukhin, either with his own mind, or, more likely, at the direction of senior colleagues, who came up with Cash Settlement Centers, which became the basis for the mechanism for theft of state monetary reserves of the late USSR.

People who understood banking were categorically against the innovation. But Matyukhin pushed through the decision. Here are his own words: “Gerashchenko was our ardent opponent in this too, he defended the system of inter-branch turnover... Not only in the State Bank, but also Yegor Gaidar did not understand us then. And I explained to him that without a system of cash settlement centers it is impossible to establish settlements between commercial banks. How else to send money to Vladivostok, for example. It’s not a good idea to fly a “snake” with money. Otherwise, each commercial bank had to have relationships with three thousand other banks. Only cash settlement centers helped to establish correspondent relations. The RCC received the necessary powers, including issuing ones, and they could also hoard money. Any bank, having received an advice note, could go to the RCC and receive money”

Soon after the creation of the RCC, the first Chechen man came there with a false advice note.

When the scale of the thefts became clear, and the police no longer had time to open criminal cases, seize truckloads of money and figure out how else to check banking transactions, the figure of Matyukhin began to attract close attention.

On June 16, 1992, Grigory Gavrilovich was relieved of his post as Chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

Then he held senior positions in commercial banks, including the Gorny Altai and Sobinbank banks, and was deputy president of the Noosphere joint-stock commercial bank; then he became an advisor to the chairman of the board of Dialog-Optim bank. All these banks ceased to exist at different times. "Dialogue-Optim" was the last - in August 2004, its license was taken away.

I was unable to find out where Matyukhin is now.

Both emissaries of Dudayev’s Chechnya and dishonest businessmen from other regions of Russia were involved in fraud with false advice notes. The exact total amount received using fake payment documents has not yet been announced. The Dudayevites, according to the most rough estimates, made over 4 trillion rubles from these operations.

How it worked

The swindlers took a bank employee as an accomplice, he printed a payment document (credit memo) and sent it to the Central Bank (Promstroybank, Agroprombank and other “special banks” were also used). The requested amount was credited from the Central Bank to the account of the legal entity sending the advice note. The fraud was elementary - some banks combined “debit with credit” once a year, and the swindlers had enough time to cash out or hide the money.

Chechen swindlers transported the money received in this way to Grozny by truckload, and filled passenger airliners and fast trains with bags of cash. Caucasians came to capital enterprises with blank advice forms and offered to use the company’s bank account for a certain share, to which a round non-cash sum was then transferred. To prevent the lender from becoming suspicious at the initial stage of the operation, the scammers chose enterprises that could afford to handle large amounts of cash.

Dudayev did not hide his involvement in fraud

Based on the use of false advice notes in the 90s, about a thousand criminal cases were initiated, which involved hundreds of billions of rubles stolen from the state. About 900 Russian banks and more than one and a half thousand enterprises throughout the country took part in the process of cashing out funds. The Chechen mafia and Dudayev's separatists from the government of self-proclaimed Ichkeria were especially active on this front. Dudayevites and members of Chechen organized crime groups carried out similar frauds, including through Chechen banks, from which money was transferred to the rebellious republic's Central Bank.

In this scheme, as law enforcement agencies established, a total of several thousand fake advice notes were involved. Dzhokhar Dudayev openly stated that he used the Russian banking system “at his own discretion”: in return for sent pieces of paper, he received planes full of bags of money. It was never possible to completely unravel the entire chain of fraud - during the war in Chechnya, the archives of the Central Bank of the Republic were purposefully destroyed.

How did it all end?

The Central Bank was equipped with special encryptors that provide cryptographic protection of advice notes, and also improved the information exchange system between cash settlement centers (CSCs). Subsequently, new software was developed that significantly speeded up the processing of these loan documents.

According to Sergei Stepashin, chairman of the Russian Accounts Chamber, fraud with advice notes caused enormous damage to the country’s economy, “thanks to” them the Russian banking system was criminalized. Operations with false advice also played a role in the process of denationalization of enterprises, when entire sectors of the economy passed into private hands.

Both emissaries of Dudayev’s Chechnya and dishonest businessmen from other regions of Russia were involved in fraud with false advice notes. The exact total amount received using fake payment documents has not yet been announced. The Dudayevites, according to the most rough estimates, made over 4 trillion rubles from these operations.

How it worked

The swindlers took a bank employee as an accomplice, he printed a payment document (credit memo) and sent it to the Central Bank (Promstroybank, Agroprombank and other “special banks” were also used). The requested amount was credited from the Central Bank to the account of the legal entity sending the advice note. The fraud was elementary - some banks combined “debit with credit” once a year, and the swindlers had enough time to cash out or hide the money.
Chechen swindlers transported the money received in this way to Grozny by truckload, and filled passenger airliners and fast trains with bags of cash. Caucasians came to capital enterprises with blank advice forms and offered to use the company’s bank account for a certain share, to which a round non-cash sum was then transferred. To prevent the lender from becoming suspicious at the initial stage of the operation, the scammers chose enterprises that could afford to handle large amounts of cash.

Dudayev did not hide his involvement in fraud

Based on the use of false advice notes in the 90s, about a thousand criminal cases were initiated, which involved hundreds of billions of rubles stolen from the state. About 900 Russian banks and more than one and a half thousand enterprises throughout the country took part in the process of cashing out funds.
The Chechen mafia and Dudayev's separatists from the government of self-proclaimed Ichkeria were especially active on this front. Dudayevites and members of Chechen organized crime groups carried out similar frauds, including through Chechen banks, from which money was transferred to the rebellious republic's Central Bank. In this scheme, as law enforcement agencies established, a total of several thousand fake advice notes were involved.
Dzhokhar Dudayev openly stated that he used the Russian banking system “at his own discretion”: in return for sent pieces of paper, he received planes full of bags of money. It was never possible to completely unravel the entire chain of fraud - during the war in Chechnya, the archives of the Central Bank of the Republic were purposefully destroyed.

How did it all end?

The Central Bank was equipped with special encryptors that provide cryptographic protection of advice notes, and also improved the information exchange system between cash settlement centers (CSCs). Subsequently, new software was developed that significantly speeded up the processing of these loan documents.
According to Sergei Stepashin, chairman of the Russian Accounts Chamber, fraud with advice notes caused enormous damage to the country’s economy, “thanks to” them the Russian banking system was criminalized. Operations with false advice also played a role in the process of denationalization of enterprises, when entire sectors of the economy passed into private hands.