In 2006, Alksnis discovered that in 2003 and 2004 the state had doled out about ninety-nine acres of its land in Rublyovka to private citizens. These lands consisted of eighty allotments, thirty-eight of them taken from the funds of the FSB Directorate of Material and Technical Support with the consent of the service’s leadership.
The land was given outright to former and current high-ranking FSB officials. According to Alksnis, land was granted by the simplest of mechanisms: A letter of request, followed by a letter of approval, was all it took for land to change hands.
For example, he said, Alexei Fedorov, a deputy chief of the FSB’s Economic Security Service, sent an application to the top official of the Odintsovo district, including with it a request from Semenenko, the deputy chief of the FSB division for lands and property, asking for land to be granted to Fedorov. Alksnis added that the land was under state ownership and that Semenenko had no right to relinquish it. The top official of the Odintsovo district just rubber-stamped the decision, Alksnis said. By law, he told Borogan, the land should have been transferred to a federal property agency for sale.
In researching the records of property transactions, the authors noticed that the FSB generals listed were not denoted by post or rank. For instance, major generals were merely called “servicemen who have served more than fifteen years.” But the authors discovered that a number of high-ranking FSB officials were on the list of those who had been given free land. They included Alexei Fedorov; Mikhail Shkuruk, chief of the Control Department in the FSB Border Guard Service; and Boris Mylnikov, head of the Antiterrorist Center of the Commonwealth of Independent States, a post equivalent to first deputy director of the FSB. Mylnikov was given his land for the nominal sum of $5 for 100 square meters.
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Others who received property free of charge were Yevgeny Lovyrev, the FSB’s main personnel officer; Vyacheslav Volokh, former chief of the FSB Antiterrorist Center, who had by then left the service and become assistant to the Minister of Agriculture; and Sergey Shishin, then the head of the Internal Security Directorate of the FSB. Lovyrev, Volokh, and Shishin were all granted allotments in the village Gorki-2.
b
In the late 1990s Gorki-2 became a fashionable part of the Rublyovka area, and the neighbors of the three FSB generals were captains of the new Russian capitalism: David Yakobashvili, chairman of the board of food-processing giant Wimm-Bill-Dann, and Oleg Deripaska, the owner of Rusal (Russian Aluminum) and at one point the country’s richest man, ranked by
Forbes
at number 9 in the world in 2008 (worth $28 billion).
4
Ads like this started to appear on the Web: “The Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Road, two connected allotments, the Gorki-2 village, an exclusive arrangement, access to the Moscow River, guards of the FSB, the entire packet of documents for a cottage building, $4,750,000” (published November 24, 2008).
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Given the prices in this advertisement, the land given to Shishin and Lovyrev was worth over $2.5 million for each.
Alksnis began to hear from his constituents, who were angry about the transactions. He sent a formal inquiry to the local authorities about the deals and forwarded it to the government of the Moscow region, but he was told not to worry. Without a response from the government, he turned to the press. When Irina Borogan’s story about the land transactions was published in
Novaya Gazeta
in March 2006, it went all but unnoticed by the authorities.
6
When the authors sought further investigation with a federal property agency, they were told that the lands had been granted for free under a law designed to guarantee modest apartments for army or security service veterans. In this case, the law had been used to hand some of the most expensive land in Russia to FSB officials.
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Had law enforcement agencies performed an investigation, the practice of giving out precious lands to FSB leadership might have been described as unauthorized generals’ initiative. Instead, in this case, it seemed to be state policy.
In 2007, Alksnis lost his seat in the parliamentary elections. The Kremlin changed the rules governing parliamentary elections, so that independent candidates were no longer permitted to run. Only officially registered parties were eligible to compete—and Alksnis’s name was simply dropped from the party list.
WHILE GENERALS WERE showered with free property in the elite district, discontent was brewing among lower-level FSB agents. Tensions reached a boiling point over a decision to introduce a new salary system known as “Factor 2.2,” under which FSB administrative officers would receive 2.2 times more pay than case officers of equal rank. By 2008, FSB officers had started to sue their leadership in Moscow military courts, demanding apartments and benefits, as promised by Russian law.
In response, the FSB created a department aimed at protecting high-ranking generals from such lawsuits. An FSB colonel told the authors: “This department was established to protect FSB leadership, not ordinary officers. At one meeting, generals of my section were asked why there was such a big difference in salaries. They answered that the Motherland once had no money. Now, the country had the resources and so they should be paid adequately for their work.” In 2008, the authors learned that a number of FSB officers had turned to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, declaring that the leadership of the FSB was discriminating against them.
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The first decision in the cases came on January 14, 2010, and found in favor of the petitioners.
9
IN ADDITION TO amassing physical property, FSB leaders were also keen to enrich members of their families. Land in the Rublyovka corridor was granted to Alexander and Vladislav Ugryumov, two sons of German Ugryumov, the chief of the FSB’s counterterrorism department in the early 2000s.
10
Andrei Patrushev, whose father Nikolai was director of the FSB from 1999 to 2008, was granted a full-time position as adviser to Igor Sechin, the chairman of the Rosneft state oil company. In 2007, President Putin gave Patrushev, 26, an award for his service to the state.
11
Patrushev had been working as an adviser to the chairman of Rosneft for seven months, and before that had served for three years at the Economic Security Service of the FSB.
12
On the same day, Nikolai Patrushev’s brother Viktor, who worked for seven years with the mobile-phone operator Megafon, was awarded the Order of Friendship. This apparently strange choice of the order, usually awarded to artists and foreign sportsmen “for strengthening friendship and cooperation between the Russian Federation and other countries,” might be explained by the fact that early in 2006 Victor had already been given the Order of Honor by Putin “for his merits in development of physical culture and sports.” The FSB director’s brother served as an adviser to the chairman of Dynamo, a sports club that had been patronized by the state security services since the 1920s.
13
Whether in the form of valuable land, luxury cars, or merit awards, the perks afforded FSB employees (especially those in particularly good standing) offer significant means of personal advancement. Russia’s new security services are more than simply servants of the state—they are landed property owners and powerful players, capable of influencing hiring decisions and planting cronies and relatives in positions of power.
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THE LOVE OF THE GAME
THE FSB AND NATIONAL SPORT
W
ITHIN THE VEILED world of the Russian security services, sport has proven far more than a means of entertainment. The services’ close affiliation with particular sports associations is both more sinister and more pragmatic. The clubs, which have maintained intimate ties with the security services since the Soviet era, offer elite training grounds for special operations forces as well as a bevy of useful contacts for servicemen.
On Wednesday, October 23, 2002, several FSB generals were called to the Lubyanka headquarters for a big celebration. The leadership, including director Nikolai Patrushev and two of his deputies, Vladimir Pronichev and Victor Komogorov, presented awards to the trainers and members of the Dynamo volleyball team for distinguished results in the Eleventh National Championship of the Russian Super League.
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(Volleyball, which Patrushev himself played, was his favorite sport.) Pronichev, Patrushev’s closest deputy, headed the Dynamo Sports Association, which at this point consisted of a soccer club, two ice hockey teams, basketball and volleyball teams, stadiums, and other clubs. The security services and Dynamo have been inseparable since 1923 when the club was founded; Pronichev served as head of association beginning in 2000, and Victor Komogorov held another top position in the sports organization. For his part, Patrushev led Dynamo’s volleyball club.
A few hours after the ceremony, Chechen terrorists seized a theater in the center of Moscow that was packed with more than eight hundred people, in what would prove one of Russia’s worst terrorist attacks of the decade.
But the attack did not deflect the FSB leadership’s fondness for sport. On Saturday, October 26, in the chaotic aftermath of the siege, the FSB director appeared at a stadium in Moscow to cheer on Dynamo’s volleyball team against Neftyanik Bashkirii in the opening game of the season.
2
PATRUSHEV’S ATTENTION TO volleyball opens a window on how the security services managed to regain some of their lost prestige in the decade of Putin’s rule. In Soviet times it was common for the KGB and the military to enjoy extremely close relations with sports clubs. After the uncertain challenges of the 1990s—during which the FSB lost control of Dynamo—Patrushev and his generals regained control after 2000.
The Soviet tradition was to tightly weave together the ranks of the security services and army with specific sport clubs. Dynamo was a club for the KGB and Interior Ministry, while the Central Army Sports Club (CSKA) was tied to the army. It was not a matter of choice: All the athletes in the army were automatically members of CSKA, just as their counterparts in state security were part of Dynamo. When KGB officers passed physical training they sported the Dynamo insignia on their clothing. In turn, all professional athletes competing in national and international championships representing Dynamo or CSKA displayed their military ranks. Lieutenants became majors and colonels on the strength of their sporting prowess. Vyacheslav Fetisov, the Russian minister of sport from 2004 to 2008, was a famous Soviet ice hockey defenseman and a longtime captain of the Soviet Union national team who subsequently played for CSKA, the New Jersey Devils, and the Detroit Red Wings. He won the Stanley Cup twice and held the rank of major in the Soviet army. Victor Shilov, a famous Dynamo wing in the 1960s and 1970s, was given the rank of lieutenant captain in the KGB.
3
At the same time, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dynamo’s facilities were used for ultra-secret training of KGB commandos.
In November 1978 two Cuban officers, Raúl Rizo and Ramiro Chirino, secretly went to Moscow. Prominent karate instructors, they were invited to the Soviet Union because Vladimir Pirozhkov, deputy chairman of the KGB, had been impressed by the Cuban martial arts training system.
c
The Cubans showed him so-called “operative karate,” suitable for special operations forces.
In the Soviet Union karate was considered the most dangerous martial art, and training or competitions were permitted only for the KGB elite personnel. For three months Rizo and Chirino trained more than a hundred KGB officers in the Dynamo club on Petrovka Street in central Moscow. Only fifteen were given the rank of instructor. Their skills were considered so secret that KGB officers were only allowed to take part in internal competitions at Dynamo and were forbidden from competing with sportsmen from other clubs. Until 1991 there were two versions of karate in Russia: the Dynamo type, which was martial; and the non-Dynamo type, which was for competitions.
At Dynamo, trainers, staff, and administrators were appointed and monitored by the state security organizations for generations. By the end of the 1950s, all leading positions at the club were filled on the orders of the security services. For many years Dynamo served as a training base for both the KGB and the Interior Ministry. KGB officers from the active reserve were given jobs throughout the club.
After the Soviet collapse, those officers who had been assigned to the club from the KGB were called back,
4
and funding to the club was cut. The secret services formally retained their interest in Dynamo, but control over the club fell to the Interior Ministry.
Yeltsin brought the security services officers back into the Dynamo organization with a 1996 decree establishing the “Dynamo State Sports Association,” an umbrella group overseeing different sports and arenas. Security service officers began to filter back into the club apparatus. Out of 500 officers attached to the club, 226 came from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 78 from the FSB, 52 from the Border Service, 11 from the foreign intelligence service, 90 from the tax police, and 43 from the communications agency.
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