Death Of A Crooked Legend -- Russian Gangland Boss Became People's Hero

MOSCOW - In the end, nothing could save Otari Kvantrishvili.

Not his 150 bodyguards. Not his fantastic wealth and fabled influence. Not his thousands of friends and well wishers, or his rumored connections in the KGB and police, nor the glitterati from sports and show business who flocked to his side - and to his funeral.

On April 5, Kvantrishvili was gunned down in broad daylight as he walked out of a Moscow bathhouse where he went every Tuesday. One bullet smashed into his head; two more struck him in the chest. On the upper floor of a building across the street, police found a German-made rifle with a sniper scope. Cartridge casings littered the floor.

So ended the life of a man reputed to be one of Moscow's supermobsters, a Russian Don Corleone who showered money and favors on his friends and favorite charities, prized loyalty and honor above all, and brooked no disrespect.

Gangsters are common

Gangland slayings and big-time crime bosses are standard fare in Russia's news these days, and the papers are full of the exploits of men with nicknames like "The Beard," "Vicious" and "Mad Fedya."

Grenades are tossed from speeding Mercedes, car bombs explode outside schools at midday, and bodies with weights tied to the ankles are fished out of rivers. By one count, there have been 17 contract mob slayings in 16 months in Moscow.

But few events in the history of the Russian mafia have so stirred the public imagination as the slaying of Kvantrishvili, who at age 46 had overcome a teenage conviction for gang rape and humble beginnings as a small-time cardsharp to create a public persona that inspired love and fear. He even started his own political party, Sportsmen of Russia.

"The country has lost - I'm not afraid of this word - a leader," Alexander Rosenbaum, a renowned bard, pronounced in the daily newspaper Kommersant.

Kvantrishvili's funeral attracted a who's who of Moscow's entertainment, athletic and political elite.

He was buried not far from the grave of his brother, Amiran, a reputed gangster who was shot to death last summer.

In a country that has been stripped of its heroes, it was the last hurrah for a man who aspired to be one. Clearly, the throng that mourned him, praising him as a rough-hewn saint, was less interested in the sources of his wealth than in the noble uses he made of it. His generosity was remarkable in a country where charity is not widespread.

The mourners spoke of the homes for neglected children he sponsored and his charities for retired athletes and war veterans. They remembered him as a legendary coach of wrestlers and a man passionately devoted to children's sports.

`Great spiritual purity'

"He was a man of great spiritual purity (even if) he may not have been quite an ordinary man," said Valentina Yashin, the widow of Russia's most famous soccer goalie, choosing her words with care.

"Not a single businessman has done anything like this, and not a single foundation has. . . . It is not admissible to say anything disparaging about the dead. Wherever his money came from, even if maybe it came by coercion, this money went to the poor."

Russian journalists have been less forgiving. Alexander Minkin, the country's best-known muckraking journalist, called Kvantrishvili a "noble scoundrel" but added, "The ministries of Security and the Interior should publish a part of his file in order to dot all the i's, so that society is not deluded about whom it has lost."

In recent months Kvantrishvili appeared frequently on prime-time television, usually talking about sports or polishing his philanthropic image. He neither smoked nor drank, and his public speech was peppered with preachy incantations and patriotic boilerplate. But in private he could also be frank - or brutal.

On one occasion, he made a veiled threat on the air against the chief investigator in Moscow's organized-crime task force - a vague mention of the man's children whose meaning seemed clear enough.

Government investigators knew a lot about Kvantrishvili, but they never even came close to prosecuting him, said crime reporter Larisa Kislinskaya. Russian criminal law lacks anti-racketeering statutes, and because Kvantrishvili gave orders rather than executed them, he was widely regarded as legally untouchable.

But no one could protect him from street justice. Mob watchers are having a field day swapping theories about who killed Kvantrishvili.

Some think his ties with government investigators stirred underworld suspicions that led to his slaying. Others think he was killed by business competitors who resented his voracious appetite for market share in the export of raw materials. One theory is that the Chechen mafia, a tough bunch from the Caucasus controlling much organized crime in Moscow, gave the order. Still others, hinting at conspiracy in high places, believe Kvantrishvili's move into politics led to his death.

Kvantrishvili himself had some theories, which he shared with the government investigator in their taped phone call.

"I have a feeling that I attract too much attention. I'm not worth it," he said. "And when people think I'm such a cunning criminal, they calculate everything except for one thing: I'm not inclined toward crime.

"Do you know how a wolf grows up? When everything is so cold around him, when he has to fight for his survival, he must bite back. So a man has to protect himself. And the best defense is offense. I have two enemies: the KGB and (the Interior Ministry), and in addition to them, the criminal world."