Thread by @oculusfiles

Corruption and organized crime has actually been around since the Tsar era, throughout the Soviet era and into present day Russia. My first encounter with corruption and organized crime was back in late 1970s in USSR. I continued to witness this as it grew and became more and

more apparent after the fall of the USSR.
From the early 1990s onwards corruption and organized crime were to reach the level where they had reached the top of the political stage and you got nowhere without bribes and help of organized crime groups.

Even the mayor of Moscow had his dirty fingers in as many dirty pies and at least one of his sons ran one of the largest markets in Moscow which back then were run by organized crime gangs like the Chechens or azeris.

This is when security companies saw their opportunity to offer protection to company leadership and any other people who due to their work were at risk of being targeted.
In the early 90s we witnessed the time when today's oligarchs started their journey to becoming billionaires

during the aluminium, (and steel and oil) assassinations of the mid 90s when organized crime groups were used to get at rivals in the aluminium wars.
This became more and more apparent in the mid-late 90s and early 2000s when I worked with security detail for very wealthy

Russians both in Russia and abroad.

This was at a very violent time when assassination attempts and killings were actually not uncommon amongst rival companies not only in Moscow and St Petersburg but throughout Russia. I even worked with security detail for

a very wealthy businessman in the Urals.

Wealthy Russians used corruption and organized crime to reach their goals in their businesses.
In early 2000s I even competed for a Russian protection detail team in a security audit..

Today's Oligarchs were no strangers either as the two Cs(Crime and Corruption) were no exception to the rules in their strive to own the aluminum, steel and oil businesses.
The first decade of the 2000s was a very violent time and I know this due to personal experience..

My film "The Oculus Files" will be about those years and with real life background from my time as security detail for extremely wealthy Russians

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