Mafia and Anti-Mafia in the Republic of Georgia

339 Pages·2011·2.99 MB·English

by  Gavin Slade User

Mafia and Anti-Mafia in the Republic of Georgia:
Criminal Resilience and Adaptation Since the
Collapse of Communism

Gavin Slade
St. Antony’s College
Oxford
2011
Abstract

'Thieves-in-law' (vory-v-zakone in Russian or kanonieri qurdebi in Georgian)
are career criminals belonging to a criminal fraternity that has existed at least since
the 1930s in the Soviet Gulag. These actors still exist in one form or another in post-
Soviet countries and have integrated into transnational organised criminal networks.
For reasons yet to be explicated, thieves-in-law became exceptionally prevalent in the
Soviet republic of Georgia. Here, by the 1990s, they formed a mafia network where
this means criminal associations that attempt to monopolize protection in legal and
illegal sectors of the economy.
In 2005, Mikhail Saakashvili, the current president of Georgia claimed that 'in
the past 15 years...Georgia was not ruled by [former President] Shevardnadze, but by
thieves-in-law.' Directly transferring anti-organised crime policy from Italy and
America, Saakashvili's government made reform of the criminal justice system
generally and an attack on the thieves-in-law specifically a cornerstone of the Rose
Revolution. New legislation criminalises the possession of the status of ‘thief-in-law’
and of membership of criminal associations that constitute what is known as the
‘thieves’ world’ (qurduli samkaro). Along with a sweeping reform of the police and
prisons and a ‘culture of lawfulness’ campaign, Georgian criminal justice reforms
since 2003 may be seen as the first sustained anti-mafia policy to be implemented in a
post-Soviet country. It also appears to have been very successful.
The longevity and sudden decline of the thieves-in-law in Georgia provides the
main questions that the following study addresses: How do we account for changes in
the levels of resilience to state attack of actors carrying the elite criminal status of
‘thief-in-law’? How has this resilience been so effectively compromised since 2005?
Utilising unique access to primary sources of data such as police files, court cases,
archives and expert interviews this thesis studies the dynamics of changing mafia
activities, recruitment practices, and structural forms of a criminal group as it relates
to changes in the environment and, in particular, the recent anti-organised crime
policy.
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Contents

List of Figures, Graphs, and Tables ............................................................................ 6
List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................... 7
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................... 8
1.The Kanonieri Qurdebi in Georgia ........................................................................ 11
1.1 A Very Brief History of Soviet Thievery ................................................................... 16
1.2 The Kanonieri Qurdebi: A Research Question ........................................................ 25
2. Trust Networks: Understanding How Criminal Groups Change and Survive .... 27
2.1 Resilience of What? ..................................................................................................... 27
2.2 Resilience to What? ..................................................................................................... 33
2.3 The Concept of Resilience ........................................................................................... 35
2.4 Four Key Variables in the Study of Resilience in Trust Networks ......................... 36
2.4.1 Summary of Variables and Effects of Change _________________________________ 40
2.5 Structure of the Study ................................................................................................. 44
2.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 46
3. Research Design, Data Collection, and Analysis .................................................. 47
3.1 Developing a Research Question and Approach ...................................................... 48
3.2 Operationalisation of Concepts .................................................................................. 51
3.3 Issues of Validity .......................................................................................................... 54
3.4 Data Sources and Data Collection .............................................................................. 57
3.4.1 Expert Interviews _______________________________________________________ 57
3.4.2 Secondary Data Analysis __________________________________________________ 61
3.5 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................... 65
3.6 Limitations ................................................................................................................... 68
3.7 Ethics ............................................................................................................................ 72
3.8 Reflections .................................................................................................................... 74
4. The Qurdebi as a Soviet Mafia .............................................................................. 78
4.1 The Emergence and Essence of Mafias...................................................................... 79
4.2 The Second Economy in Soviet Georgia .................................................................... 87
4.3 The Qurdebi in Soviet Georgia .................................................................................. 95
4.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 101
5. The Qurdebi as a Post-Soviet Mafia .................................................................... 103
5.1 Krysha and Garcheva: Practices of Protection and Arbitration .......................... 105
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5.2 The Qurdebi in the Legitimate Economy ................................................................ 111
5.2.1 Mini-Buses ___________________________________________________________ 112
5.2.2 Market Wholesalers _____________________________________________________ 115
5.2.3 Gambling and Debt Collection ____________________________________________ 116
5.2.4 Herbal Exports _________________________________________________________ 119
5.3 The Qurdebi and Illegal Enterprises and Activities ............................................... 120
5.3.1 Kidnapping and Bride-Kidnapping _________________________________________ 121
5.3.2 Car Theft _____________________________________________________________ 124
5.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 125
6. Predators: the Qurdebi and the State before and after the Rose Revolution ..... 128
6.1 Predation, Organised Crime and Trust Networks ................................................. 130
6.2 Mafia and State in the Later Soviet Period: Clientage and Negotiated Connection
........................................................................................................................................... 134
6.3 Clientage, Bargaining and Integration with State Structures in the 1990s .......... 139
6.4 Anti-Mafia and the Rose Revolution ....................................................................... 144
6.4.1 Anti-Mafia Legislation __________________________________________________ 145
6.4.2 Police and Prison Reform ________________________________________________ 148
6.4.3 Educational Reform _____________________________________________________ 152
6.5 Strategies of Resistance ............................................................................................. 153
6.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 157
7. Fitting the Frame: Recruitment Practices and Adaptation ................................ 161
7.1 Recruitment and Signalling Attributes.................................................................... 162
7.2 Initiation and Trust ................................................................................................... 166
7.3 The Role of Prison ..................................................................................................... 169
7.4 Changes in the Use of Prison in Recruitment ......................................................... 172
7.5 Determinants of Changes in Recruitment: Hypotheses ......................................... 176
7.5.1 Competition ___________________________________________________________ 177
7.5.2 Agency and Opportunity Costs ____________________________________________ 185
7.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 193
8. Between Networks and Hierarchies: Structure and Internal Relations ............ 194
8.1 Traditional Structure of the Thieves’ World Outside Prison ................................ 195
8.2 Structure, Coordination and Transformations in Trust Networks ...................... 197
8.3 Factionalism ............................................................................................................... 199
8.3.1 Population Centres and Locative Nicknames _________________________________ 201
8.3.2 Internecine Conflict _____________________________________________________ 204
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8.4 Within-Faction Centralisation ................................................................................. 207
8.4.1 Network Analysis: Centralization in the Kutaisskaya ___________________________ 209
8.5 Determinants of Organisational Structure and Change ........................................ 216
8.5.1 Factionalism and Penal Policy _____________________________________________ 217
8.5.2 Centralised Factions and Competition _______________________________________ 221
8.5.3 Network Size, Agency Costs, Factionalism and Centralisation ___________________ 224
8.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 228
9. ‘With My Body and Soul’: Commitment and Exit Costs in the Thieves’ World 230
9.1 The Concept of Commitment ................................................................................... 232
9.2 Commitment and Change in the Georgian Thieves’ World .................................. 236
9.2.1 Side Bets: The Obshchak ________________________________________________ 238
9.2.2 Burning Bridges: Social Ties and Lifestyle ___________________________________ 241
9.2.3 Normative Commitment: Nicknaming and Self-Identification ____________________ 247
9.3 Summary of Changes in Commitment Mechanisms .............................................. 254
9.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 259
10. Maintaining Distinction: the Qurdebi as a Criminal Status Group ................. 260
10.1 Criminal Collective Identities: Signalling Status .................................................. 262
10.2 The Qurdebi as a Status Group ............................................................................. 267
10.3 The Trademark and Foiling Fakers ...................................................................... 273
10.4 Protecting High Status: Standardising Signatures ............................................... 277
10.5 Protecting High Status: Qurdebi and the Church ................................................ 281
10.6 A Decline in Societal Support? ............................................................................... 282
10.7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 288
11. In Conclusion: the Qurdebi on Trial ................................................................. 290
11.1 Previous and Future Research ............................................................................... 295
Glossary of Terms ..................................................................................................... 299
Appendix: Images ..................................................................................................... 302
Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 312
Secondary Literature ...................................................................................................... 312
Books and Articles __________________________________________________________ 312
Journalistic Reports _________________________________________________________ 326
News Agencies _____________________________________________________________ 329
Expert Interviews ___________________________________________________________ 333
Archival Sources .............................................................................................................. 334
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Court Cases and Indictments ......................................................................................... 335
Official Documents & Reports ....................................................................................... 336

List of Figures, Graphs, and Tables

Figure 1.1: Prison Hierarchy ________________________________________________________ 22
Table 2.1: main features of governance structures ________________________________________ 31
Table 2.2: variables constituting resilience of trust networks and effects of change on survival ____ 41
Table 5.1 to show enterprises protected by the qurdebi by sector ___________________________ 108
Table 6.1 to show predominant relational strategies of the state and the qurdebi in Georgia over time
______________________________________________________________________________ 158
Table 7.1: differences in numbers of convictions across cohorts ____________________________ 174
Graph 7.1: numbers of qurdebi killed between the years 1988-2009. ________________________ 181
Table 7.2: location of qurdebi in 2004 by cohort ________________________________________ 188
Figure 8.1: Structure of ‘Thieves’ World’ outside the Prison ______________________________ 196
Table 8.1: internal changes in trust networks___________________________________________ 198
Map 8.1 showing populations by region and numbers of kanonieri qurdebi in each _____________ 202
Figure 8.2 showing the interrelations of actors within the Kutaisskaya faction_________________ 212
Table 8.3 to show top three qurdebi for each faction in terms of number of ties ________________ 214
Map 8.2 showing locations of Georgian prisons in 2004. _________________________________ 218
Table 8.2: shows frequencies for where court cases involving Imeretian qurdebi took place ______ 219
Table 9.1: number of qurdebi with nicknames and percentages by cohort determined by approximate
age baptised Source: AOCU-T & K 2004 _____________________________________________ 252
Table 9.2: commitment mechanisms in the original thieves’ world and whether each is still present. 256
Graph 10.1: to show attitudes to the qurdebi 2004-2007 __________________________________ 285

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List of Abbreviations

AOCU-T = Anti-Organised Crime Unit Tbilisi, Special Operations Department,
Ministry of the Interior Affairs

AOCU-K = Anti-Organised Crime Unit Kutaisi, Special Operations Department,
Ministry of the Internal Affairs

PA = Presidential Archive

MVD-A = Archive of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs

R = Respondents in expert interviews, numbered 1 to 44

MIA = Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia

OSCE = Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe

ESI – European Stability Initiative

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Acknowledgements

Back in 2007, completing this thesis within four years seemed highly
improbable and it would have remained that way were it not for the positivity and
support of a whole range of people. I apologise for leaving out here many, many
people who, perhaps not even knowingly, assisted along the way.
In Oxford, my supervisors, Professors Ian Loader and Federico Varese, have
been extremely amiable, patient and supportive of the project. I have been very lucky
to have such supervisors and the stamp of their intellects can be found in the resulting
work. Dr. Mary Bosworth has been an excellent Director of Graduate Studies and
shown a real interest in the work of the DPhils at the Centre for Criminology. Of
them, Justin Abold, Maria Christina Dorado Alvarez, Alexey Bessudnov, Paolo
Campana, Alex Chung, Christopher Giacomantonio, Marie Manikis, and James Ogg
have all been great to work and socialise with and discuss common issues. It was also
a pleasure to share the experience of doing a DPhil on modern Georgia with Joel
Lazarus at St. Antony’s. I have gained a lot from presenting and discussing my work
with Professor Diego Gambetta, Dr.Valeria-Pizzini Gambetta and Dr. Heather Hamill,
as well as Professor Judith Pallot and Professor Carlo Morselli whose advice at an
early stage had a formative influence on the thesis. Finally, many thanks also to Lia
Chockoshvili at the Oxford Language Centre for the long hours refereeing my fight
with the Georgian verb system.
The level of support I received in Georgia was frankly humbling. In particular,
I wish to say a big thank you to the Macharashvili family who I have known since my
first visit to Georgia in 2002. As well as treating me as a member of their family, they
are my primary educators of Georgian culture and society and have enriched every
experience I have had in Georgia. I have benefited intellectually and practically from
the help of the foremost scholars on the qurdebi in Georgia, Giorgi Glonti and Givi
Lobjanidze, they have both been more than giving with their advice and time. At the
Institute of State and Law in Tbilisi, Lasha Bregvadze gave me use of office space
and introduced me to many of the excellent legal scholars working in Georgia. Penal
Reform International and in particular, Maia Khasia, Eka Iakobishvili, and Rait Kuuse
were all incredibly helpful and supportive of the project and I am deeply indebted to
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them for their help and advice. Mari Gabedava and Nana Lobjanidze at Transparency
International assisted me at crucial times. Lela Chakaia has been a great friend,
discussant and supporter of the project – it was in fact a conversation with her back in
2006 that initiated it. The Ioseliani family in Kutaisi put me up and introduced me to
Imeretian drinking traditions. For their time and generous help, I would also like to
thank Irakli Kotetishvili, Chiora Taktakishvili, Shota Utiashvili, Gia Siradze and
Kakha Tsalkalamanidze, and everyone at the Presidential Archive.
Georgia is blessed with some incredibly conscientious people in the expat
community working for the betterment of the country to whom I wish a successful
continuation of their activities. Of these, I am especially grateful to Dr. Timothy
Blauvelt for his time and advice on archive exploration.
Andriani Fili deserves more than just this mention for her amazing patience
and support over the last few years; she has made the whole research process a lot
easier. Finally, I dedicate this to my parents for their lifelong commitment to
education that has instilled curiosity and a love of learning in me.
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