The US recently moved to blacklist one of Russia’s oldest and most notorious organised crime gangs, the so-called Vory v Zakone or Thieves-in-Law
Born in Soviet Union’s darkness
The group emerged from the Soviet Union’s brutal gulags. Its members developed traditions and rituals in the prison camps of former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s gulags and are now kingpins in an underworld network that has spread far beyond Russia. Those prisoners who agree to live by its code on the outside, and are “crowned” with its secret tattoos, now operate in cities from East Asia to the United States, according to AFP
Never make a living through honest means
Those who followed the code— refusing to assist state authority, renouncing family life, serving jail time and vowing never to make a living through honest means—are ‘crowned’ as Vory v Zakone. After the fall of the Soviet Union, in Moscow’s newly capitalist free-for-all, Russia’s organised crime gangs joined its oligarch investors and economic migrants on the road to the West
Notorious international crime mafias Authorities have targeted the Thieves before, but the US Treasury’s designation of the entire network as a ‘Transnational Criminal Organization’ is the first measure that treats them as a single group. In doing so, Washington seems to be confirming that the threat posed by the fabled “Russian mafia” from the former Soviet republics is a more organised one than previously supposed, AFP adds
In addition to listing the Thieves-in-Law, the Treasury named four members—alleged veteran mobsters whose addresses and multiple identity papers span Russia, Central Asia, Israel, Belgium and Italy. As a ‘TCO’, the Thieves-in-Law join a list that includes outfits such as Japan’s Yakuza racketeers, the Camorra mafia of Naples and Mexican cartel Los Zetas