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EESTI ELU reedel, 9. aprillil 2021 — Friday, April 9, 2021
Where to hide the money? tive sources of rent, bribes and extortion within the Russian security state. People within it Who says we’re heading for a can and do make fantastic cashless society? When Ivan amounts of money through all Belozertsev, governor of Penza kinds of illegal schemes and region, was arrested and his outright plunder. house searched this month, However, they also some they found about 500 million times acquire another role: as rubles ($6.6 million) at his an informal, underworld bank. home. What, after all, can you do with Still, this was nothing to the all your ill-gotten gains? The haul found when FSB Colonel Russians have all kinds of Kirill Cherkalin was arrested in complex and inventive schemes 2019. He turned out to be sit to generate obnal. ting on 12 billion rubles ($158 Whereas conventional money million) in cash and valuables, laundering is about taking dirty putting to shame the previous money and concealing its illicit record-holder, police Colonel origins, until it can pass as Dmitry Zakharchenko, whose legitimate, this is about taking stash was a paltry 9 billion clean money and moving it off rubles, when he was arrested in the books so it can be used for 2017. dubious purposes, from insider Grainy police video shots of trading to outright bribery. sack after sack of money being However, it is still money, hauled out of another over- and to then try and put it in a decorated home have become bank risks bringing attention to ritual components of the name your sudden and inexplicable and shame news story. If noth wealth. This may attract the ing else, they help establish the attention of Rosfinmonitoring, arrestee’s guilt in the public the Federal Service for Finan mind long before any trial. cial Monitoring. It may also Cherkalin’s case, incidentally, embolden more ruthless preda has still to come to court, but tors and risk empowering your Zakharchenko was sentenced to political rivals. thirteen years in prison. As Belozertsev has shown, Nonetheless, Cherkalin has for many the answer is simply already had his and his family’s to stockpile cash (which, after assets confiscated: four flats, all, can always be recycled as a two dachas, six plots of land bribe), because they simply plots amounting to 7,116 square have too much to safely invest meters, 14 other premises, plus or deposit. Such are the woes of cars and cash – including over the corrupt official. 8 million euros – for a total This is, of course, dangerous. value of over 6 billion rubles Someone could burgle your ($79 million). home, or, worse yet, it can be It is no coincidence that found by investigators. One Cherkalin worked in the FSB’s answer is to outsource sitting notorious Economic Security on your loot to someone whom Service (SEB), while Zakhar you feel you can trust and who chenko had been deputy head ought to be beyond suspicion. of the Interior Ministry’s eco Senior figures in the econo nomic security and anti-corrup mic security structures – game tion directorate. These agencies keepers turned poachers – have have emerged as the most lucra successfully acquired this role.
Mark Galeotti, Moscow Times, March 2021
Saame tuttavaks – Pleased to meet you: Real Estate Agent Triinu Lumi Triinu is a 44-year old Canadian Estonian who lives in Stoney Creek, Ontario. Triinu was born and raised in Estonia, grew up near Tallinn, and has made Canada her home for the past 24 years. Triinu and her husband have an 18-year-old daughter and 20-year-old son. Triinu has studied at OREA (Ontario Real Estate Asso cia tion) College and is a certified
real estate agent at Right at Home (RAH) Realty Inc. RAH Realty Inc was established in 2004 and is one of the largest real estate agencies in the Greater Toronto Area. Right at Home is an avid supporter of Habitat for Humanity and sup porting the community is also very important to Triinu. It is important for her that everyone has a place they can call home. Triinu is happy to also serve all fellow Estonians who wish to buy, sell or rent real estate property in the HamiltonBurlington-Niagara area. Triinu spends her free time with stay ing active and photography.
TRIINU LUMI kinnisvarafirma müügiesindaja BURLINGTON • HAMILTON • NIAGARA
Right At Home Realty Inc. triinu@triinulumi.com mobiil 289-442-5390 kontor 905-637-1700 fax 905-637-1070
The notion is that they are either beyond suspicion or, more plausibly, so well con nected that their properties are deemed sacrosanct or they would at least get fair warning before any search. I do not know, but wonder if that helps explain that extra 6 billion on which Cherkalin was sitting, and certainly some of Zakharchenko’s stash. This seems to be a practice dating back to the mid-2000s, and worked for years. As these cases illustrate, its time may be coming to an end. The powers that be are alert to it, and while Russia is still ruled by klepto crats, there has been a real and significant campaign against corruption at the lower and medium ranks. Even the SEB is not quite as bullet-proof as once it seemed. So corrupt Russians will per haps have to get used to living amidst mounds of cash, with all the vulnerabilities that entails. For example, two men have just been convicted of kid napping a retired FSB Major General Alexander Pastushkov in summer 2018. They drove him to a house outside Moscow and then tortured him until he was willing to lead them to his home in the Odintsovsky dis trict. From the garden, they dug up seven plastic containers contained the equivalent of $5 million dollars in various currencies. The victim turned to the police, who in 2019 arrested the criminals. However, the investi gators then began to wonder quite how the general had come to accumulate the equivalent of 315 million rubles. That he was the former first deputy head of the FSB’s construction depart ment was probably no accident. He hurriedly tried to change his statement and claim that nothing had been stolen from him, but too late. While the kid nappers were sentenced to ten years in prison, he had $1.1 million, 5 million rubles, and property with a value estimated at 36 million rubles confiscated. Unable to bank their ill-got ten gains, unable to turn to the authorities if anything happens to it, today’s corrupt officials find themselves in the same circumstances as the tsekhoviki, the magnates of the late Soviet Union’s underground economy. Many of them became fantastically wealthy thanks to their smuggling operations and, especially, illegal factories churning out goods in demand in an era of scarcity and rationing. Where possible they often sought to convert cash into more portable valuables such as diamonds and tsarist-era gold coins, but they still often found themselves sitting on mountains of cash. One of the first gangsters to see this opportunity in the 1960s was Gennady Karkov, known as ‘the Mongol.’ He and his men, wearing fake police uniforms, would likewise seize their victims and drive them out of town. Tsekhoviki would be tortured to give up their money in a variety of sadistic ways,
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Eesti Sihtkapitali Kanadas stipendiaat
Liina Sadul Liina Sadul is an Estonian-Canadian university student who received a 2020 EFC Scholarship with funding from the Martin & Heljo Mäeks Scholarship Fund. Liina is currently in fourth year Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto, specializing in Robotics and Biotechnology. A graduate of Toronto Esto nian Schools, Liina participated in the song festival with the school choir and con tinues to be active as a guide leader and a member of Korp! Amicitia. In her free time, Liina enjoys reading, cycling, na ture and Ultimate Frisbee. On being Estonian Being Estonian means that I am connected to the Estonian culture and I am able to share my history and language with other Estonians. I am able to participate in Estonian activi ties, including folk dancing and singing in choirs. I celebrate the unique culture and values of Estonia, prepare and enjoy traditional foods. It also means that I honor the memories of my grandparents, such as celebrating and preserving the Estonian language and culture. It also means that I have friends and community for a lifetime. Being Estonian in Canada means that I am able to partici pate in many organizations and activities that are connected with being Estonian. I think that the social aspect … is very impor tant as having Estonian friends gives us a reason to continue with “Estonianness”. I know that I want to preserve our organisations. And that can happen only if we demon strate our culture and history so that we can be proud of it. I believe that the Estonian community in Canada will re main alive but due to different reasons than in the past … As most Estonians in Canada are not planning on moving to Estonia, it is important to protect our heritage and traditions as these are the ties that connect us with our culture, our his tory and [then] we feel connected to Estonia and Estonians all over the world. On the role of EFC I think that the Estonian Foundation of Canada is import ant to the community because it helps to support Estonian organizations, events, and programs, which may not be able to run without the support. These activities are important be cause they keep Canadian Estonians in touch with each other, and thus our culture and heritage. It’s easy to forget our cul ture and history when we’re not surrounded by it every day, and Estonian isn’t our primary daily language, but being able to participate in Estonian activities allows us a chance to con nect with other Estonians and keep in touch with our com munity. ••• Thanks to the generosity of our donors, Estonian Foun dation of Canada has granted 150 scholarships to Canadian-Estonian students since 2003. Scholarship details and applications available at www.estonianfoundation.ca/en/efc-scholarships or by contacting the EFC office at 416-465-5600 or info@estonianfoundation.ca Scholarship application deadline: June 1, 2021
from burning them with hot irons to, most dramatically, nailing them into a coffin, which the burly henchman known as ‘Executioner’ would then begin to saw in two, as if in a magic trick. People paid up. Karkov counted on the fact that his victims could not go to the police without admitting that they too had committed crimes with potentially very serious consequences. After all, serious economic crimes could lead to the death penalty, while when Karkov was eventually
caught in 1972, he received just 14 years in a strict regime prison colony. Eventually, the vory v za kone, the aristocrats of the Soviet underworld, reached a deal with the tsekhoviki, in effect ‘taxing’ them in return for leaving them alone. Maybe in due course, the state will end up doing the same, offering an amnesty in return for a generous cut of all the dirty money sitting buried in back gardens and stuffed in closets across Russia.
