Chechen mafia

The Chechen mafia (Chechen: Нохчийн мафи; Russian: Чеченская мафия, tr. Chechenskaya mafiya) is one of the largest ethnic organized crime groups operating in the former Soviet Union next to established Russian mafia groups.

Structure

While most Slavic and Caucasian gangsters in the Soviet era followed the thieves in law subculture, Chechens largely resisted this, instead preferring to use the tribal structure of the teip as well as the concept of an abrek, the outlaw-hero. There are relatively few Chechen thieves-in-law.

In Moscow

The Moscow branch of the Chechen mafia, also known as the Obschina or "community", was founded by gangster Nikolay Suleimanov during the 1980s. Suliemanov operated a second-hand car business and made the bulk of his profits through tax evasion. The group later moved into extortion as capitalism penetrated the Soviet economy, and at this point Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev, at the time a university student and part of an underground student movement dedicated to Chechen independence, was brought in as an enforcer. The more ideological Noukhayev imposed an additional condition on businesses under his "protection", which was that they must invite a Chechen into their workforce. Facilitating Chechen migration into Moscow would mean his organisation became a formidable force in the underworld. Boris Berezovsky was one of the businessmen associated with the Chechens during this period.