The Threat of Russian Organized Crime

A long smear of blood on the road marks the place where two masked men shot dead one of Russia's most prominent industrialists . . . outside his house in the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. Oleg Belonenko, 51, managing director of Uralmash, the largest industrial company in Russia, had just got in this grey Volga car to go to work when two men in track- suits opened fire with pistols, hitting him in the head and his driver in the stomach. Both men died in hospital. Mr. Belonenko's murder . . . once again shows the power and ruthlessness of criminal gangs who control large sections of Russia's economy.1