Russian Police Smash 20-Year Old Drug and Murder Gang

MOSCOW, August 6 (RIA Novosti) – Russian investigators said Tuesday they have charged the members of a St. Petersburg crime gang suspected of carrying out a string of murders and smuggling drugs during the country’s turbulent 1990s.

The gang’s leader, Alexander Kuryakov, is suspected of organizing the group, which was behind a string of killings in the 1990s, according to a statement on the Investigative Committee’s website.

His co-accused include one of the city's senior police officials, who is suspected of protecting the gang.

The inquiry found that between May 1992 and May 1994, Kuryakov, “who had leadership skills,” set up the gang by recruiting school friends and former inmates, who he met while serving a sentence for earlier crimes, the Investigative Committee said in a statement Tuesday.

The gang was one of hundreds of criminal groups emerging in the chaotic wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in Russia, many of them in St. Petersburg.

In 1994, Kuryakov's gang and its associates allegedly carried out at least five murders, some of the victims being its own members, the statement said.

Kuryakov was eventually convicted in 2000 on charges of kidnapping, orchestrating a murder, extortion, fraud and robbery. He was soon paroled and walked free just two years later.

By that time he had already become a major underworld kingpin and formed a group of drug dealers in Russia and the European Union, the statement said.

Last year, law enforcement authorities again detained Kuryakov and his accomplice Sergei Tsaryov over their alleged roles in a 2011 contract murder.

The former head of a St. Petersburg police department anti-organized crime squad, Vladimir Golovkov, is suspected of “protecting [the gang members] by not holding them responsible for their crimes as well as informing them of police operations and how to counteract law enforcement,” the statement said.

In addition, investigators said, Golovkov allegedly helped Kuryakov and his associates by arresting their underworld rivals.

One of the seven suspects has made a plea bargain with the investigation, while another has been held in Germany with a large consignment of drugs. The others are in custody, officials said, adding the inquiry is not yet over.