Blowing Up Russia by Alexander Litvinenko Read Free Book Online

special Vympel Fund was even established to finance this work. The chairman of the fund was a criminal boss well known in Russia, Sergei Petrovich Kublitsky (his underworld nickname was Vorkuta). Suslov was the vice-chairman. At the same time, Suslov was also chairman of the board of directors of the Law and Order Center regional social fund (Moscow, Voronkovskaya Street, 21).

Suslov maintained extensive contacts in the state s departments of law enforcement and agencies of coercion, including the leadership of the FSB. Operational data obtained through the Central Office of the Interior for the Moscow Region indicates, in particular, that Suslov maintained close contact with Major-General Yevgeny Grigorievich Khokholkov, head of the Long-Term Programs Office (UPP) established in summer 1996, which provided the basis for the establishment in 1997 of the FSB s Office for the Analysis and Suppression of the Activity of Criminal Organizations (URPDPO), more commonly known as the Office for the Analysis of Criminal Organizations (URPO).

Alexei Kimovich Antropov, a graduate of the intelligence school of the External Intelligence Service, was a sector head in the Third Section of the URPO, specializing in the struggle against internal terrorism. Both Lazovsky and Suslov were on good terms with Antropov.

It is worthwhile examining in greater detail this secret department of the FSB with its long, incomprehensible title that is impossible to remember and was frequently changed to prevent the public penetrating its veil of secrecy. The Office for the Analysis of Criminal Groups was established in order to identify and then neutralize (liquidate) sources of information representing a threat to state security. In other words, to carry out extra-judiciary killings, acts of provocation and terrorism, and abductions. One of Khokholkov s deputies was major-general N. Stepanov and another was the former minister of state security for the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria, A.K. Makarychev. The UPP possessed its own external surveillance section; its own security consultant, Colonel Vladimir Simaev; its own technical measures section, and two private detective and bodyguard agencies called Stealth and Cosmic Alternative. The latter specialized in bugging pagers and mobile phones and other technical operational measures, while Stealth had a legendary reputation.

A private bodyguard and detective agency which changed its name periodically, just like the UPP, Stealth was registered as a business in 1989, at the very dawn of perestroika by a resident of Moscow called Ivanov, who was an agent of the Fifth Department of the KGB of the USSR (which subsequently became Department Z). Ivanov was used in the struggle against internal terrorism, and his line of contact was with a member of Colonel

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V.V. Lutsenko s department, which had provided operational support for the establishment and activities of Stealth. With the assistance of Lutsenko, who used the private bodyguard firm to resolve personal rather than operational matters (the free provision of various types of protection, or roofs, for commercial organizations), during the period from 1989 to 1992, Stealth developed extensive contacts in the criminal underworld and the sphere of law enforcement, becoming one of the most well-known security agencies in Russia.

Following his discharge from the special agencies in 1992, Lutsenko took control of the detective and bodyguard firm, which he re-registered with himself as one of the partners.

Lutsenko s solid connections in various departments of the former KGB, in combination with the exodus from the Russian security services of large numbers of experienced operatives who also maintained their own well-tested contacts and networks of agents, meant that Lutsenko was able to hire highly qualified professionals to work in Stealth.

From his old area of operations (the struggle against terrorism) Lutsenko had retained reliable contacts with