Blowing Up Russia by Alexander Litvinenko Page B

a member of the secret services (FAPSI).

If that is the case, the possibility cannot be excluded that the laboratory for producing high-quality forgeries was also set up with the permission of the FSB and FAPSI, and controlled by them.

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Let us get back to Lazovsky. The liquidation of his group during the period from February to August of 1996, was the greatest success achieved by the Twelfth Section of MUR. The personnel of Lazovsky s group were not organized on local territorial lines like ordinary criminal groupings. Lazovsky s brigade was international, which was a pointer to its distinctive nature. Working under Lazovsky were Chechens and people from Kazakhstan and gunmen from groups based in towns close to Moscow. Marat Vasiliev was a Muscovite, Roman Polonsky was from Dubna, and Vladimir Abrosimov was from Tula, Anzor Movsaev was from Grozny& The brigade was very well equipped, too.

Lazovsky had been on the Russian federal wanted list from 1995, for offenses under article 209 ( banditry ) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. He was accused in connection with a number of different episodes. For instance, in December 1993, Lazovsky s group killed the guards who were transporting cash for the MMST Company, and 250 thousand dollars were stolen.

At the same, time there were disputes between Lanako and the Viktor Corporation over deals involving deliveries of oil products. On January 10, 1994, persons unknown (obviously working for the Viktor Corporation) shelled the automobile of Vladimir Kozlovsky, a director and chairman of the management board at Lanako, with a grenade thrower. (The first syllable of Kozlovsky s surname had provided the third syllable of the name Lanako.) Barely two days later, on January 12, a bomb exploded outside an apartment belonging to one of Viktor s managers with such massive controlled force that the steel door was hurled into the apartment and clean through the next wall standing in its way. It was purely a matter of luck that no one in the apartment was hurt. The explosion, however, triggered off a fire in the apartment block, and neighbors were forced to jump from the windows. Two of them were killed, and several other people were injured.

On January 13, persons unknown turned up at Lanako s Moscow premises, at corpus 3 of 2 Perevedenovsky Lane, where insult swapping with Lanako staff was followed by an exchange of gunfire. Ten minutes later, two busloads of OMON officers (the special operations police brigade) arrived at the Lanako offices, where they overcame armed resistance and took the office by storm (it was only by good luck that there were no casualties). They then proceeded to ransack the premises, arrest about sixty people, and take them away to the station, where they were recorded on videotape. After that, almost everyone was allowed to go. The only persons still detained at the station the following day were four bodyguards who had firearms in their possession when they were arrested.

They were later tried, but received surprisingly lenient treatment for a shoot-out with the police. Two were released by the court, and two were given one year s penal servitude.

On March 4, 1994, a full-scale battle broke out in the Dagmos Restaurant on Kazakov Street between Lazovsky s gunmen and members of a Dagestan criminal organization, with about thirty men involved from each side. The final tally was seven dead and two wounded. All of the dead were members of the Dagestan group.

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On June 16, 1994, three members of the Taganka criminal group were mowed down by machine-gun fire near the offices of the Credit-Consensus Bank. Lazovsky had demanded that the bank pay him two-and-a-half billion rubles in interest on a sum of money over which the bank was in dispute with the Rosmyasmoloko firm, and the bank had turned for help to the Taganka group, its roof. The battle was sparked off by the Taganka bandits refusal to pay Lazovsky.

Lazovsky committed one of