Karen Dawisha Quotes

[F]ly-by-night companies were set up. Many of his friends... still around today, were behind those companies. The goods went out, and incomplete or no shipment came back. So millions... were made just in that episode alone.

Spanish... officials... having intercepted ..."hundreds" of phone calls ...about [Gennady Nikolaevich] Petrov's "immense power... political connections... [and] criminal activity in Russia ...directed from Spain....Troika mafia leaders invoked ...names of senior ...[Russian] officials to assure ...illicit deals would proceed ..." ...[I]n 1990 with the purchase ...of ...[a] Hotel in , Majorca ...with Leningrad Communist Party and funds ...Petrov was able to host ...notables, including ...mayor , Putin'’s boss. Reznik... and... wife... were co-owners of... companies with... Petrov and , also arrested on suspicion of , , and the establishment of a criminal structure that traded in , , and murder ...traced back to ...the monopoly ...given by the St. Petersburg government to the Tambov criminal organization in ...gasoline in the 1990s.

Gleb Pavlovsky... an extremely important member of the PR team around Putin in 2000, and who has fallen out with the ... stated (and I agree...) that "Putin was part of a very extensive, but politically invisible layer of people, who after the end of the 1980s, were looking for a revanche in connection with the collapse of the Soviet Union."

Sergey Ivanov, Nikolay Patrushev, Aleksandr Grigor’yev, Vladimir Strzhelkovskiy, and were... contemporaries of Putin in the Leningrad in the 1980s. ...Patrushev and Ivanov... remained... closest to him. ...Strzhelkovskiy ...worked in the Leningrad ... In... 1990 he created... Neva ...[later] official travel agency of ...St. Petersburg ...Putin ...named Strzhelkovskiy deputy minister... of ...sports, and tourism, and after 2000... of economic development and trade... In 2008... [he] was named CEO of... ... world’s largest... and [producer]... [with] support... of Putin... [and] ....When he ...resigned in 2012 with a $100 million cash , the New York Times summarized... "...another data point in the shift of corporate wealth and influence away from the first generation ...oligarchs... toward ...former security service agents ...under... Putin."

After his electoral loss in 1996, Sobchak... charged... with corruption... had to flee the country... widely reported as masterminded by Putin. ...[G]etting Sobchak out... protected those, like Putin, about whom there was a lot of incriminating information. ...Sal'ye ..."Before, Putin was under Sobchak’s protection [under his roof], and now Sobchak was under Putin’s protection [krysha]."

The argument of the book is that this group failed in 1991, but they succeeded in 2000. It's the same group, ideologically, not everybody, but ideologically.

I had published six books already with Cambridge.

[Saint] Petersburg... was known as the "bandit's capital," and Putin was regarded by many as the link between organized crime and the mayor's office. ...[H]is activity was investigated by city and federal officials. All... squashed when he came to power.

The book contains major sections on Bank Rossiya, on the food scandel in Saint Petersburg in the early 90s, on Putin's involvement in the control and emergence of the gambling industry in Saint Petersburg, Putin's involvement as a member of the board of the St. Petersburg Real Estate Holding Company [St. Peterburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs AG]... registered in Germany... investigated by and B&D for its involvement in the laundering of money from the Cali Cartel, ...giving ...a monopoly position to the Tambov gang in the , ...creating and using... money from the mayor's contingency fund through... Twentieth Trust... and the unauthorized use of funds from the mayor's contingency fund in getting an apartment for himself in Saint Petersburg...

Russians seeking to move money to the West... can establish an LLC and purchase... [real estate] property without revealing... the actual owner...

[T]his older generation of KGB generals... who were not in prison, put people in and got them prepared, and Putin was the one who rose to the top... That's my argument.

2014... U.S. government’s sanctions... claimed a direct connection between Putin, Timchenko, and : "Timchenko’s activities in the energy sector have been directly linked to Putin. Putin has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds."

So 91 failed but 2000 succeeded...

Anton Surikov... former military intelligence specialist.. "...all Russian politicians are bandits from St. Petersburg." Surikov...was dead within several months of this 2009 interview.

Shamalov... was hired by Putin in 1993. The conflict of interest was massive. Kolesnikov... described... [Dmitri] Gorelov... director of Petromed, ordering medical equipment; Shamalov... representative of , delivering the equipment... a good friend of Putin, with whom he went on to found... .... Kolesnikov said, "When Shamalov came to us with a proposal... we understood... this was... directly from Vladimir Vladimirovich." Gorelov believed that... Putin’s KVS... provided the "roof" to protect against... organized crime. When Vladimir Yakovlev became governor of St. Petersburg... the relationship... [with] Petromed... soured, and Gorelov and Kolesnikov bought... the city's stake... They became major shareholders in Bank Rossiya, purchased a stake in s, and by the mid-2000s were... in the Russia... richest Russians. Kolesnikov... ultimately became a whistleblower... [claiming] diversion of funds... to build "."