Thread by @IDashboard

A 🧵 about Putin, his reliance on organized crime and why the alliances he forged with criminals have and will have a huge impact on our futures. /1 #Russia #OrganizedCrime

In the 70s & 80s, the KGB and their allies controlled Russian organized crime to a great extent and used them for large scale drug and people trafficking, sophisticated money laundering and whatever else could hurt West Europe and the United States. /2

Alliances of convenience were made between Russian criminals, Italian mafias, triads, the American mob and others. But ideology permeated some of the groups that were solely business oriented. A higher purpose was born. One that went beyond the traditional family interest. /3

Organized crime played an important although discreet role in the Cold War. Scores of criminals, “vor v zakone”, left the Soviet Union and seeded what was to become a formidable future Russian transnational crime syndicate. They were the first globalists /4

I can’t recommend enough Robert Friedman’s book “Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America” for understanding the US branch of a new type of organized crime, one with one foot still in what was left of the kominternist socialism and one in West capitalism. /5

The 90s were an accelerator for crime and corruption. The Russian state was not able to control them anymore and unleashed crime lords worked exclusively for themselves. KGB agents did the same. /6

Secret agents and criminals tasted big 💰 and joined forces once again. A global threat, beyond the reach of nation-state law enforcement started to emerge. /7

The internet also popped up and it was to play a dual role. Both as an enabler and later as a deterrent. Russian criminals got more sophisticated. Technical schools across the Eastern Block were excellent and people made big bucks at the expense of a complacent West./8

This happened btw in other former countries of the Eastern Block, but I won’t insist on them in this thread. Suffice to say a new playground with many new participants started to shape up and criminal strategies multiplied themselves across servers. /9

Some of the Russian criminals and former secret agents transformed themselves into venal entrepreneurs, bankers and politicians seeding the kleptocracy that was to take over Russia and the former Soviet countries. They started operating more or less in the open. /10

Putin was one of them. He knew the power in the organized crime - secret services nexus. He was an intelligence officer deployed to Germany during the Cold War when the Eastern Block mounted joint OC + secret services “special operations”. /11

Putin, too, craved for big 💰 With his rise, criminals had protection at home and a growing “criminal services” industry ready to do their bidding in the West. Ill-gotten💰 💰 💰 were easy to invest and keep safe. Business was booming. /12

Everybody gathered kompromat on everybody. At the same time old criminal records were expunged to make sure the kompromat stays effective. A new corrupt social fabric, based on fear, was woven together and took over the Russian society./13

Russian oligarchs emerged but this was really just a new name for people with cleansed criminal records. /14

A big chunk of the new global organized crime was now controlled from inside the Kremlin. This was unprecedented and the potential was enormous. It was an invisible army, a huge network, all at Vladimir Putin’s disposal. /15

The money they made was unheard of. From the South of France to the Caribbean, from Moscow to Cape Town, from Kyiv to Cleveland, the Russian criminals started investing their money in a huge shopping spree of industrial assets, real estate, banks, art, politicians, start-ups. /16

The West was being bought and had no problem with it. Money was welcome, questions not asked and know your customer policies were not enforced by big banks. Enablers were everywhere, some were willing participants, but most were ignorant greedy fools./17

The depersonalized and long power of the kompromat backed loot was not yet understood. Crime and corruption was becoming the norm. In Russia and the West alike. /18

In the former Soviet Union and many other places where the Kremlin had influence, politicians without organized crime ties, offshores, hidden business interests and skeletons in their closet had no chance to succeed and become important. /19

The Kremlin had a blast, but it was soon confronted with a big problem. With the internet and democratic efforts, transparency increased , and honest law enforcement, academics, journalists, and activists started to look at the very recent past and act on it. /20

Money was easier to follow, whistleblowers came forward with more frequency, anti-bodies built up. Cross-border cooperation that once was the exclusive strength of organized crime was slowly embraced by others and became a main weapon against transnational criminality. /21

This was a huge blow to the already settled kompromat societies and created new needs for the Kremlin and its allied kleptocratic governments. They had to control or destroy the media, the academia, the civil society, and the justice systems. At home and abroad. /22

Dismantling democratic systems was easy in Russia, Hungary, Azerbaijan, and a few others where the kompromat society was everything. It was much harder in others and presented a real challenge in the West. The criminals/oligarchs and Putin needed to define a new enemy. /23

They came up with the deep state - people who remembered what the criminals did the previous summers. They also needed to change reality and people beliefs but more on this, the counter efforts, and the future of the Kremlin run organized crime in a future thread. /END