FBI Arrests Alleged Boss Of Russian Mob In U.S. -- Suspect, Based In Brooklyn, Charged In Extortion Plot

NEW YORK - FBI agents arrested the alleged kingpin of the U.S.-based arm of the Russian mafia on extortion charges yesterday, dealing what law-enforcement officials said was a major blow to the growing Russian organized-crime presence in this country.

Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, 55, and five of his associates were picked up in the "Little Odessa" section of Brooklyn, where the bulk of the city's Russian immigrants live. Three others remain at large.

The arrest follows a long and difficult investigation by the FBI in cooperation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Russian Ministry of the Interior.

As he was led from FBI headquarters in downtown Manhattan, Ivankov, a stocky, well-groomed man, kicked and spat at photographers. He was arraigned later at U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.

Stephen Handelman, author of the recent book "Comrade Citizen: Russia's New Mafia," said, "Getting Ivankov is a major coup, because it sends a message to Moscow that American law enforcement is finally getting serious about trying to stop the spread of organized crime here."

Russian gangs have been operating out of Brooklyn's Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay areas since the 1970s, when the then-Soviet Union allowed several hundred thousand Russians to come to the United States.

The criminal element that grew up around those immigrants mostly concentrated on gasoline-tax scams and insurance fraud. But the collapse of the Soviet Union brought a new wave of Russian immigrants, teaming up the small-time mobsters of the earlier era with highly organized gangs that have been operating in Russia for years.

Ivankov, law-enforcement officials contend, was part of the new wave. In the old Soviet Union, he was the organized-crime boss for the Russian Far East, a post that, along with the Asiatic cast to his features, earned him the nickname "Yaponchik," or "Little Japanese."

While in prison in the 1980s, he allegedly became one of the elite group of Russian crime bosses, commanding a huge network of thugs and underlings.

In late 1991 or 1992, he slipped into the United States on an illegal visa and joined his fellow emigres in the cafes and flashy nightclubs clustered under the elevated subway line in Brighton Beach.

"He was the most senior crime figure in the U.S. and basically he's been trying to take over the existing networks of small-time Russian groups and consolidate them into a professional organization," said Handelman.

In January 1993, the Russian Ministry of Interior notified the FBI of Ivankov's presence here. According to the complaint, mobsters under his direction extorted money from an investment-advisory firm run by two Russian emigres, Alexander Volkov and Vladimir Voloshin.

The mobsters allegedly threatened to murder Voloshin's father in Moscow unless they were given millions of dollars. Voloshin's father was later killed - after which Volkov and Voloshin were abducted and taken to a restaurant, where they agreed to pay $3.5 million in protection money, the complaint said.