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Yaponchik Stole Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Car
// Famous "legal" thief is returned to homeland
Extradition
Yesterday, the notorious Russian criminal figure Vyacheslav Ivankov (Yaponchik) was deported from the United States to Russia. He will be held in the Matrosskaya Tishina preliminary holding center next to YUKOS owners Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Alexander Zheglov provides details.
Yaponchik’s extradition from the United States was long awaited, but faster than expected. Vyacheslav Ivankov had already served a term in an American prison and could have sought refugee status in that country. To avoid that, the Russian Prosecutor General and Ministry of Justice began negotiations with the Americans two years ago. They reached an agreement on his unconditional extradition without recourse to the courts. That decision was confirmed in May of this year when Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov visited the United States.
The crime boss was received like a Hollywood star. There were more TV cameras, satellite transmitters and photographers at Sheremetyevo-2 Airport than when Sir Paul McCartney arrived. The journalists did not have his exact flight details and remained in suspense until 1:00, when our Kommersant correspondent received a call from an acquaintance in the Main Department for Punishment Execution (GUIN), who said, “He’s landed. Be on the alert, they’ll take him away fast, without warning.”
Ivankov was delivered to Moscow in a private Gulfstream airplane with five other deportees under the guard of two Russian Ministry of Justice officers and five American Immigration and Naturalization Service employees. A nurse watched over the handcuffed deportees during the flight. A Ministry of Justice source told Kommersant that US taxpayers paid for the rental of the airplane. According to Planetary Business Aviation, rental of an airplane of that type costs no less than $100,000. It flew from Seattle to Moscow in 23 hours with two stopovers—in New York, where Ivankov boarded, and in Iceland for refueling. Many of Ivankov’s fellow passengers (who “voluntarily” proceeded to the Main Department for Combating Organized Crime, where they were questioned and released, since there were no outstanding charges against them in Russia) did not even know that he was among them. They said that Vyacheslav Kirillovich, the older gentleman flying with them, bore no resemblance at all to a crime boss. He read The New Chronology of Rus, England and Rome, the thick book by physicist Gleb Nosovsky and Russian Academy of Science member Anatoly Fomenko, talked about history with those sitting around him and told “entertaining stories.” “He was more like a historian than a hardened criminal,” said one of the deportees.
To call what went on around the airport heightened security measures would be putting it very mildly. GUIN spetsnaz commandos and Ministry of the Interior operatives put on a real show.
First, two decoy microbuses roared past journalists. Obviously, the organizers of the operation intended for reporters and Ivankov’s colleagues to follow. But not all of them did and, ten minutes later, a motorcade of 15 cars passed, including an armored Ford, in which Ivankov was riding. That Ford is already famous—it’s the same one Ministry of Justice spetsnaz use to take Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev to Meshchansky Court in. (Yesterday’s YUKOS court proceedings started late for lack of transport.) The armored car is able to withstand attack from a grenade launcher and is equipped with a metal cage and chains for prisoner transport. Such was Yaponchik’s homecoming.
The Ministry Justice motorcade, with reporters on its heels, roared out of the airport onto Leningrad Highway, where it got stuck in a traffic jam. Ministry officers thought a second, then closed off traffic along the highway and continued on its way, leaving the reporters behind. Traffic flow was restored only after the motorcade was out of sight.
While some of the Ministry’s officers were protecting Ivankov from journalists, others were ushering camera crews from state television channels Channel 1 and Rossiya into the holding center so that they could film Ivankov’s reception in all its fine points. In front of the cameras, “gentlemanly” Ivankov immediately turned into a brazen criminal. First, he spit at the Channel 1 cameraman, then struck at him with his book. “I’ll kill you, bitch, whores, faggots!” he hissed. He tried to attack the same cameraman again in the corridor when he saw that he was being led back in front of the lens. The guard only had time enough to ask, “Which way did he go?” before 64-year-old Ivankov had made two jumps toward the cameraman and struck out at the camera. Filming was halted in the interest of avoiding further excesses. Recall that Ivankov’s first skirmish with the press took place in the United States in 1995, when FBI agents were barely able to rescue another television camera.
Ivankov was place in a so-called quarantine cell, where prisoners are kept for some hours or days until the prison administration finds them a permanent place in one of the common cells. “Ivankov will be placed in a common cell, since there are no longer single cells in Russian holding facilities,” Deputy Minister of Justice Yury Kalinin said. He added that Ivankov will not be placed in the same cell as Khodorkovsky. That would be unlikely in any event, since Ivankov stands accused of murder and Khodorkovsky of economic crimes.
The length of Ivankov’s stay at Matrossky Tishina depends on the Moscow prosecutor’s office. “Our people will visit him in the holding facility today, explain his rights to him, find out if he has a lawyer and, if not, find out who he would like to have represent him,” said deputy Moscow prosecutor Vladimir Yudin. “Charges will be filed on Thursday.”
Ivankov has yet to name his legal team. One of his friends told Kommersant that Ivankov does not want Alexander Dobrovinsky to defend him. Dobrovinsky defended him at his trial in the United States. Genrikh Padva, who worked with him in the late 1980s, is now busy with the Khodorkovsky trial. The only other Russian lawyer that Ivankov knows is Mark Kruter, who even wrote a book called I Defended Yaponchik.
“He is one of those criminals who still maintain the old understanding of honor among thieves, which precludes murder,” Kruter said of his client. “So don’t think that the Moscow’s prosecutor’s allegations are based on fact. They probably have nothing to accuse him of. More likely, they need my client as a source of information on a number of contract killings and other criminal machinations. It’s easier to crack a person when he’s being held in isolation. That’s their plan. Ivankov has already served a term in America and they asked the Americans to deport him before he was even freed. Knowing Ivankov, I can say for sure that it will be an exercise in futility. He won’t cooperate with the prosecutor, and the case against him won’t do well in court. But everybody can dream, even the prosecutor.”
Ivankov’s crime-world friends think that “his sons, who are supposed to arrive in Russia soon, or have already arrived, will decide about his lawyers.” Ivankov’s older son, Eduard, lives in Austria, and his younger son, Gennady, in the United States. It is possible that his lawyer will once again be Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation Mark Kruter, who was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Ivankov met with Department for Combating Banditry and Murderers investigator Sergey Misyura for the first time yesterday. They will meet on a regular basis. Misyura suspects Ivankov of the murder of two Turkish citizens. The prosecutor’s office holds that Ivankov and his friend, the late criminal Vyacheslav Sliva, entered Fidan restaurant (22 Ryazansky Prospekt) on February 29, 1992. The coat-check attendant served three Turkish visitors ahead of other diners, to the great dissatisfaction of the criminals. A disagreement arose, in the course of which Ivankov, only recently released from prison, pulled out a pistol and shot the Turks. Two of them died on the spot. The third was seriously wounded and returned to Turkey as soon as he was well enough. It is not altogether clear how the prosecutor intends to prove the 12-year-old murders. According to information obtained by Kommersant, the chief witness, the coat-check attendant, has died and the Turkish survivor of the attack is not anxious to give testimony against Russia’s biggest crime figure—at least not in person, which Yaponchik’s defense will undoubtedly insist on. The 15-year statute of limitations on murder is also pressing on the prosecutor. The investigation must be finished and the sentence passed by 2007. Otherwise, even if his guilty is proven, Yaponchik will go free.
Alexander Zheglov
All the Article in Russian as of July 15, 2004
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