| Founded | Early 1990s |
|---|---|
| Founding location | Ukraine |
| Territory | Active in many parts ofEastern Europe, in the former Soviet Union,Western Europe,United States (mostlyBrighton Beach andMiami) andIsrael. |
| Ethnicity | PredominantlyUkrainian Jews andUkrainians |
| Criminal activities | Racketeering,drug trafficking,entryism,extortion,loan sharking,murder,human trafficking,construction management,money laundering,robbery,bootlegging,arms trafficking,gambling,bribery,fencing,prostitution,theft,skimming,pornography andfraud |
| Allies | Russian mafia Camorra 'Ndrangheta Bulgarian mafia American Mafia Armenian Power Triads Serbian mafia Romanian mafia Israeli mafia Sicilian Mafia |
TheUkrainian mafia (Ukrainian: Українська мафія) is a collective of various organized crime related elements originating inUkraine. Such organizations are regarded as one of the most influential types of organized crime coming out of the formerUSSR, including also theRussian mafia, theGeorgian mafia, theChechen mafia, theArmenian mafia and theAzerbaijani mafia. Ukrainian criminal organizations are involved in a significant number of illegal activities. Although Ukrainian criminal organizations are for the most part independently operating enterprises, they are sometimes connected withRussian mafia organizations, such as the case withSemyon Mogilevich.[1]
Following the collapse of the formerSoviet Union, there were large stockpiles of arms left inUkraine. The rise of the Ukrainian mafia came from their participation in the illicit international trafficking in these arms. Between 1992 and 1998, some $32 billion in military material disappeared from military depots in Ukraine and ended up primarily inWest Africa andCentral Asia. At the time Ukrainian criminal organizations were also alleged to have trafficked weapons to war-torn places such as Afghanistan.[2]
From trafficking in arms, Ukrainian crime syndicates entered into the international trade in illegal drugs, becoming a major player in the narcotics traffic fromCentral Asia toCentral Europe. The reach of the Ukrainian criminal organizations has been reported from Central European countries such as theCzech Republic andHungary, where they're involved in prostitution, to North American countries and Israel, where they found a significant power base following the mass immigration ofUkrainian Jews, most of whom were law-abiding citizens, but also included criminal elements intent on profiting illegally from the open borders.[3]
In the 2000s, the Ukrainian mafia cooperated with the NeapolitanCamorra in the cigarette smuggling business. The Ukrainians would smuggle the cigarettes from Ukraine andEastern Europe intoItaly, where with the help of the Camorra it supplied theNeapolitan market.[4][5] In recent years, the CamorraContini clan is said to have cooperated in the same scheme with the Ukrainians.[6]
The most infamous and well known form of Ukrainian organized crime is the so-calledOdesa mafia named after the Black Sea port city ofOdesa. Odesa is an infamous smugglers' haven and a key hub in post-Soviet global trafficking networks, not the least of which is moving Europe-bound Afghan heroin arriving from the Caucasus. Even in Ukraine's west, gangs are often closely involved in the lucrative trafficking of heroin, people, and counterfeit cigarettes into Europe, sometimes in cooperation withRussian mafia gangs.[7]
Odesa traditionally had an ancient culture of banditry, dating back to the large and impoverished Jewish population. Famous writers such asIsaac Babel often wrote about the infamous exploits of Jewish gangsters, thieves and crime lords in the port city.[8] 20th century thuggery made way for sophisticated organized crime when local crime lords began to use the city's sprawling port to their advantage. The at first locally activeOdesa mafia, sometimes also called theMalina, became well known when it first branched out toNew York City and later toIsrael, when both countries gave the opportunity for Soviet Jews to emigrate. Many people from Odesa's Jewish population migrated abroad, among them a significant number of the city's most infamous career criminals. Although the gang was born in the city of Odesa, it has since established most of its headquarters in cities such asNew York City,Miami,Tel Aviv,Antwerp andBudapest with brigades composed of former Odesan or Odesa-connected criminals active in a large number of other cities.[9]
In the 1990s a powerful gang led byAlexander Angert, known as the Don of Odesa,Gennadiy Trukhanov, now the current mayor of Odesa, and Nickolay Fomichev established a large drug and arms trafficking scheme, after they made money in the oil industry. The gang branched out into Europe, using Italy as a base of their operations.[10] According to the authorities, the notorious arms dealerLeonid Minin was also involved in the scheme.[11]
In theUnited States the Odesa mafia is based in theBrighton Beach district of Brooklyn, New York. It is regarded as the most powerful post-Soviet criminal organization in the US and has since expanded its operations toMiami,Los Angeles and theSan Francisco Bay area, where it has established connections with local Armenian and Israeli crime figures. It's known for being a very secretive organization and is involved in protection rackets, loan-sharking, murder-for-hire, narcotics trafficking, as well as the infamous fuel tax fraud rackets.[12] Nonetheless a large amount of Odesa mafia-connected gangsters have become part of the US' criminal folklore, examples beingMarat Balagula,Evsei Agron andBoris Nayfeld. Feuds, often resulting in extreme violence, happened in the 1980s and 1990s between Odesa gangsters such as the internal war between Balagula and Agron at first, and later on between the Nayfeld brothers and Monya Elson.[13]