Putin... 1991... was made head of the supervisory council overseeing the... gambling industry in St. Petersburg. ...[H]ow did the city become a major… - Karen Dawisha

No action was more symbolic of the intention of the group around Putin... than the registration... 1996, of the Ozero Dacha Consumer Cooperative... establishing... Vladimir Smirnov as its leader. ...[O]ther members ...Nikolay Shamalov, Vladimir Putin, , Yuriy Koval'chuk, Viktor Myachin, ...Sergey ...and ...Andrey Fursenko. ...This group ...stayed by Putin throughout his ...period in office, and ...all made hundreds of millions and... billions of dollars. ...[A] cooperative... is a... way for Putin to avoid being given money directly, while enjoying... wealth shared among co-owners. ... Smirnov had long been "closely linked with the well-known 'mafia' businessman Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin)."

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.

[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.