Thread by @CarlSchreck

Ever heard of the metric ton of Colombian cocaine that ex-KGB in St. Petersburg seized in '93, when Putin was deputy mayor? No? Well here's our - if I do say, wild - longread w/@kromark & @Soshnikoff: rferl.org/a/putin-cocain…

Now, a thread on what happened with all that blow.
/1

In 1992, an Israeli gang decided to ship 1,092 kilos of Cali Cartel cocaine from Colombia to Finland and then to Russia by road. The end destination was W. Europe -- Russia was just an attractive entry point due to corruption & smugglers' connections.
/2

They had a plan so crazy it might just work: They stashed the cocaine in cans of corned beef to ship to Petersburg, which suffered from food shortages in the wake of the Soviet collapse. Putin's shady barter deals for food had actually landed him in hot water a year earlier.
/3

One of the Israeli smugglers told us an insider at St. Petersburg City Hall - where Putin worked - helped w/docs to make shipment look legit. We partially corroborated some of his claims. Smugglers knew the insider as "Roman Izikov" - an alias. True identity remains unknown.
/4

But Israel caught wind of the plan, & multiple governments tracked the cargo in hopes of breaking a massive cocaine-trafficking channel.

If tracking the coke to its final destination was the goal, though, tipping off Russia mighta been a bad idea.

Russia just seized it.
/5

Russian authorities stopped container with the corned beef/cocaine on the Finnish border in Feb. 1993. The Petersburg branch of the MBR (former KGB, future FSB) took custody of the container. The branch was headed by Putin's old KGB buddy, Viktor Cherkesov.

/6

Here's extremely rare security-service footage @kromark tracked down from shortly after the cocaine bust. It shows a man with a passing resemblance to Cherkesov tasting the coke and saying it "numbs the tongue." (We haven't confirmed it's him - his wife claims it isn't.)

/7

One paper reported the cocaine was headed for Eurodonat Terminals, a customs clearing center owned by Israeli magnate Oscar Donat, who had ties to Putin's boss, Anatoly Sobchak. Eurodonat Terminals was registered by the city's External Relations Committee, which Putin headed.

/8

Israel subsequently arrested Donat (seen here in the only photo we ever found of him) in connection with the cocaine shipment but dropped the charges due to lack of evidence. Their case might have been stronger if Russia had allowed the coke to go to its final destination.

/9

Israel eventually convicted several of those involved, however, including the smuggler we interviewed, Shemtov Michtavi.

At a press conference after the bust, Putin's KGB buddy Viktor Cherkesov (in the center below) vowed there would be a "major trial."

/10

But Russia never put anyone on trial. It simply passed its case materials on to Israel. The lone suspect arrested in Russia was Dmitry Selyuk, who went on to become a famous soccer agent. The charges against him were eventually dropped. He declined to comment to us.

/11

So, in the end, Russia had no convictions. But it DID have a metric ton of illicit cocaine on its hands. So what to do with it? Welp, at that press conference mentioned earlier, Putin's buddy Cherkesov said it would be repurposed for medical use.

/12

Cherkesov's subordinate, chief investigator Sergei Yakovlev, seemed noncommittal when asked by the Jerusalem Post nine months later: "We don't know what we'll do with all the cocaine. Maybe we'll give it to a hospital."

/13

We asked the FSB what exactly happened to the cocaine and whether it was ever repurposed for medical use. Obviously they didn't answer. Cherkesov (with Putin below in 2004) also didn't respond to questions we sent to his wife (the only contact we could find).

/14

We also scoured news archives looking for any mention in the Russian media that the cocaine was converted for medical use. We found nothing. The ONLY one we managed to get was a scanned newspaper article sent to us by Cherkesov's wife - and published in a newspaper she ran.

/15

Cherkesov's wife is Natalya Chaplina, a prominent journalist in Petersburg in the 1990s who went on to launch the news site Rosbalt. The 1995 article she sent us was published in Chas Pik (Rush Hour), the paper she ran at the time.

And folks, the article is weird.

/16

The journo says he accompanied two vans carrying the metric ton of cocaine from Petersburg to a secret facility in Moscow where it would be converted for medical use. But he never reports actually seeing the drugs. And he says he was BLINDFOLDED upon arrival to the site.

/17

Naturally, the name of the facility is not given, and the deputy director is identified only with the pseudonym "Ivan Ivanovich" (John Doe).

/18

In the interview, "Ivan Ivanovich" talks about how they will make pharmaceuticals out of the massive batch of cocaine that they got for free. Then he says something curious: he's "surprised" that the World Health Organization agreed to this arrangement with the illicit coke.

/19

We figured there must be some record of this supposed agreement - it's a metric ton of cocaine, after all - at the WHO. So we asked them if they had any. They responded that they checked in their archives but that they "could not find anything relevant in our records."

/20

The article ends with the newspaper run by Cherkesov's wife thanking the FSB branch he runs for allowing their journalist to ride along on such a "delicate operation."

/END