Читать книгу Putin’s People - Catherine Belton - Страница 17

At that time, the Tambov was becoming the city’s most powerful organised-crime group. Its leader, Vladimir Kumarin, had served time in jail in 1991 following a violent battle with another of the city’s mafia groups. After he emerged from prison, with the help of Putin, Traber and his men, the Tambov began taking control of St Petersburg’s entire fuel and energy business. The battles with rival gangs continued: in 1994, Kumarin lost one of his arms in a bomb attack. By that time, however, he was creating the St Petersburg Fuel Company, or PTK, which became the city’s monopoly domestic oil distributor, while Ilya Traber was taking over control of the sea port and the oil terminal on the Tambov’s behalf.[62] (Later, Spanish prosecutors described Traber as a co-owner with Kumarin of PTK.[63]) Kumarin became so powerful that he was known as St Petersburg’s ‘night governor’. In essence, he was the dark side of City Hall.

Putin seemed to be central to these manoeuvrings, the point man providing logistical support from the mayor’s office. Together with his trusted deputy Igor Sechin, who towered over a lectern in an anteroom outside Putin’s office vetting all who entered, he was the one who issued the licences that allowed Traber to control the port and the oil terminal. He was the one who granted Kumarin’s PTK an exclusive contract to supply fuel for the city’s ambulances, buses, taxis and police cars.[64] The first sign of his cooperation with the Tambov group came late in the summer of 1992, when his Foreign Relations Committee registered a Russo–German joint venture, the St Petersburg Immobilien Aktiengesellschaft, or SPAG, for investing in the city’s real-estate business. Much later, German prosecutors would allege that SPAG was a vehicle for laundering illicit funds for the Tambov group, as well as for a Colombian drugs cartel.[65] During his stint as St Petersburg’s deputy mayor, Putin served on SPAG’s advisory board. The Kremlin said this was no more than one of many such ‘honorary’ positions he held as deputy mayor. But one of SPAG’s co-founders said he met Putin five or six times to discuss SPAG’s St Petersburg business.