Spanish... officials... having intercepted ..."hundreds" of phone calls ...about [Gennady Nikolaevich] Petrov's "immense power... political connectio… - Karen Dawisha

My basic argument is... Putin, as deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg worked with the mafia to make their activities legal. He was in a position within the government to provide license and registrations... for items going out... and coming into the country. He sent, over his signature, Tambov mafia leaders as members of cultural delegations to Germany. ...[I]n Saint Petersburg ...White Nights was a mafia front ...[F]rom the very beginning there were people involved with cultural exchanges... gambling [etc.,]... very close to Putin who were using their position for [cross-border exchanges of] goods and services... [E]ven in 1991-92 that border wasn't open for people who had a criminal record. So he verified for their applications for visas that they had no criminal record.

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...

Putin operates a ""... that severely punishes disloyalty while allowing access to economic predation on a world-historic scale for the inner core of his elite.