Transnational Organized Crime and Jihadist Terrorism: Russian-Speaking Networks in Western Europe by Michael Fredholm

Author:Michael Fredholm [Fredholm, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Criminology, Social Science, Political Science, World, Political Freedom, Terrorism, Russian & Former Soviet Union
ISBN: 9781351709491
Google: da41DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 36706112
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

The merger of Chechen separatist, criminal, and jihadist networks

In 1997–1998, the former gang leader and ChRI official Nukhayev established a range of entities including the Caucasian-American Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC, and the Transcaucasian Energy Consortium, which was intended to be used for the sale of Chechen oil. He also reportedly succeeded in persuading several influential Western political figures and businessmen to invest in his proposed scheme to create a Caucasus Common Market. However, the scheme failed when the Chechen incursion into Daghestan in August 1999 led to renewed warfare.34 By then, Nukhayev was routinely described as one of the wealthiest and most influential people in the Caucasus.35 These were the actions of a businessman, not a jihadist. So were, perhaps, Nukhayev’s plans in 1999 for a somewhat Islamic system of government for Chechnya, with a non-elected state council that would elect the president of the ChRI.36

By 1999, Russian officials argued the importance of Chechen organized crime and business in financing terrorism in Chechnya. The Russian Federal Tax Police Service (FSNP) estimated that most of the financing for Chechen rebels originated from Chechen organized crime groups, which by then controlled more than 2,000 private companies and banks across Russia. The deputy director of the FSNP, Major-General Aslanbek Khaupshev, noted that dozens of Chechen-controlled companies in Moscow alone were involved in money laundering, some of which went to finance Chechen separatist activities. Several schemes, exposed by the FSNP, involved oil shipped from primitive oil refineries in Chechnya to be illegally sold in neighboring Daghestan. The refineries were owned by Basayev and Khattab, hence used to promote their jihadist activities. Indeed, the FSNP noted that illegal channels of financing that were set up by Chechen organized crime groups had been disrupted in Primorskiy Kray, Astrakhan, Novgorod, and Lipetsk regions. They had also exposed 12 companies owned by individuals linked to Wahabbis in the North Caucasian republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessiya.37 While by then assuredly there was a Russian interest in linking ChRI with organized crime, there was nothing inherently surprising, or unlikely, in the information provided by the FSNP.

Furthermore, the war in Chechnya had resulted in creeping Wahhabization. Among its leaders were Movladi Udugov (b. 1962). At first press secretary of separatist government, President Dudayev made him Minister of Information and Press. In 1996, Udugov was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister for state policy and information by acting president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, the radical Islamic extremist who had succeeded Dudayev. Finally, Udugov was appointed ChRI Foreign Minister by President Maskhadov. He was again Minister of Information and Press in 2005–2006.38 Udugov founded the Islamskaya Natsiya (Islamic Nation) party, which claimed to represent over 30 Muslim organizations in the North Caucasus, and declared an aim to unify the region on the basis of Islam. In 1997–1998, Udugov and his supporters ceased to recognize the authority of Maskhadov and, supported by Khattab and soon also Basayev, worked to introduce Islamic law in the same manner as was guiding the state in Sudan and Taliban-held Afghanistan. Under

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