MOSCOW MOBSTERS LINK UP WITH COLOMBIA CARTELS

MELGAR, Colombia -- No one knows for sure what led Viktor Goriainov to pull
out a gun and fire at one of his Russian chums one night last August. But
when police arrived at La Florida Villa in this resort town, they found a
dead Russian and a bag with $100,000 in U.S. cash.

The murder investigation opened a window into the dealings of the Russian
mafia in Colombia -- and far beyond.

Now, nearly a year later, law enforcement and customs authorities in Moscow
and Bogota say they fear the Russian mob is muscling into the global
narcotics trade in a big way, funneling 40 to 50 tons of cocaine a year to
Russia for distribution throughout Europe, trading weapons for drugs, and
operating in an arc through South Florida, the Caribbean and as far afield
as Brazil and Argentina.

Russia's ambassador to Colombia, Ednan Agaev, fears that Colombia's
weakened cocaine cartels pale in comparison to their Russian counterparts.

``I'm afraid that the Russian mafia is much more powerful than the
Colombian mafia. They are much more sophisticated. [They have] many more
world connections,'' he said.

Colombian drug lords have good reason to look to Russia: Cocaine sells in
Moscow for three to four times the price in Miami, and Russian bankers
barely flinch when people walk in the door with bags of cash. Money
laundering arrests in Russia are unknown.

``Anybody who shows up with foreign currency is considered an investor.
They take what comes,'' said Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami expert on
drug trafficking.

Authorities say traffickers view Russia as a money laundering haven, an
emerging drug market, and a ``back door'' to send cocaine into Europe.

Mobsters smuggle cocaine through Russia ``on the theory that [European]
customs officials wouldn't be as likely to look for narcotics coming from
the east. . . . It increases transportation costs but it decreases their
risk of getting caught,'' said Rens Lee, president of Global Advisory
Services in McLean, Va., and a specialist in drug trafficking and
international organized crime.

After the fall of communism, Russian crime groups found open horizons.
Traditionally linked to gun-running, extortion and gambling, the groups
muscled into narcotics and the quasi-legal movement of commodities.

``There's so much money here,'' Joseph D. Serio, an expert on Russian
organized crime, said in a telephone interview from Moscow. ``These guys
can go smash up a BMW and buy another one the next day with the money in
their pocket.''

A Hunger For Cocaine

Newfound wealth in Russia and other former Soviet Bloc capitals fueled a
hunger for cocaine among the nouveau riche. From Moscow to Warsaw and
Budapest, the allies of Colombian traffickers push cocaine at the clubs
populated by the young and the rich.

``I have heard of cases where a Colombian businessman will go to a party.
When everybody gets drunk, he starts passing out free cocaine,'' Lee said.

The marketing ploy seems to work. Already, some 15 percent of Russia's 180
million people have tried illicit drugs, Russian authorities say, and the
Interfax news agency in April cited experts who predicted that four million
Russians will be addicts by the year 2000.

``Russia is a very attractive market for the drug cartels. Consumption in
Russia is bigger than in Germany, bigger than in Spain,'' said Agaev, the
Russian ambassador.

While Russia reels from the problem, Colombia says the ``Russian
connection'' is turning into a national security threat.

``We have discovered that the majority of these individuals have been
linked to the KGB,'' National Police Chief Rosso Jose Serrano told The
Herald. ``It is a strong and united mafia, and it is nearly impenetrable.''

Weapons from Ukraine

Chief among Serrano's concerns is the willingness of Russian mobsters to
swap weapons for narcotics. Last year, Colombian authorities stumbled on
480 new AK-47 automatic rifles that came direct from a Ukrainian factory.

``We don't know how the weapons entered the country,'' Serrano said, ``We
think most weapons come in through Turbo, while the cocaine goes out
through Turbo.''

A tiny port, Turbo sits on the Gulf of Uraba in the remote northwest of
Colombia, where outlaw activity is rampant. Serrano believes the weapons
were destined for Marxist guerrillas, who protect coca fields for the drug
cartels.

More perilous weapons may now be filtering into Colombia. After two
Lithuanians were busted in Miami in June 1997 for trying to sell
Bulgarian-made surface-to-air missiles to drug cartels, the Sofia Kontinent
newspaper in Bulgaria cited ``industry sources'' as saying, ``In the
Colombian mountains, where the drug cartels' headquarters are located, such
missiles have already been tested on air targets.''

As Colombia's inquiry into the Eastern European connection progresses, law
enforcement chiefs from smaller countries have flocked here for information.

``The chief of the Belizean police was here with me. He said that a bunch
of residency visas had been sought by a Russian fellow. When they checked,
they found he was a Russian mafioso,'' Serrano said.

Russians with extra cash have been spotted in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela
and Peru, usually buying resorts and casinos in the $3-$4 million range,
U.S. law enforcement sources said.

Escobar Pioneered Routes

The Colombian drug lord who pioneered cocaine routes to Eastern Europe was
Medellin Cartel boss Pablo Escobar, who began shipments there in the late
1980s, using the Cosa Nostra in Italy as intermediaries.

The major push came, however, when the competing Cali Cartel sent a
mid-level operative, known as El Caliche, on an Aeroflot flight from Lima,
Peru, to Moscow in late 1992 for a rendezvous with one of the founders of a
major Russian crime syndicate, police said.

He was met by ``Sylvester,'' a beefy Ukrainian tractor driver nicknamed for
his resemblance to the actor Sylvester Stallone. His real name was Sergei
Timofeyev, a leader of Solntsevo, a gang based in a southwestern Moscow
neighborhood that is one of Russia's largest criminal groups.

Across The Finnish Border

Within months, Cali Cartel members were shipping major loads of cocaine,
usually by ship, to Scandinavia, then by truck across the Finnish border
into Russia. The largest bust ever reported by Russian authorities came in
February 1993, when police near St. Petersburg seized a ton of cocaine
aboard a truck in containers marked ``meat'' and ``potatoes.''

By 1996, FBI sources say they were receiving information that a leader of
Solntsevo, Sergei Mikhailov, had boasted he could ``do anything'' he wanted
in Colombia. Mikhailov is now in jail on money laundering charges in
Switzerland.

One of the earliest Colombian groups to focus on Eastern Europe was the
Grajales family, which had gained respect in Cali through investments in
vineyards, coal mines, department stores and sprawling fruit orchards. In
1994 authorities announced that the Grajales clan had worked through the
Cosa Nostra to smuggle cocaine in 55-gallon drums of fruit paste and pulp
to Europe.

It was a former baker from Popayan, though, who appears to have cooked up
the biggest smuggling operations to Russia.

Authorities say Pastor Perafan used investments in Russian natural gas
fields to shield cocaine smuggling. Perafan was arrested in Venezuela last
year and extradited to New York, where he was convicted in May on drug
trafficking charges.

Phone Records Checked

With Perafan and the Grajales clan in jail, authorities are combing phone
records and discovering that other criminal groups are establishing vast
links with gateway cities to the former Iron Curtain region.

``In 1995, the average number of calls between Budapest and Bogota was
1,500. Now, it is more than 7,000,'' National Police intelligence chief
Oscar Naranjo recently told a forum of regional anti-narcotics agents.

Complicating the investigations, though, is that few Russian mobsters visit
Colombia. They strike their deals elsewhere.

``There is no need for Russian criminals to come here. . . . They make all
their contacts with Colombian gangs in Miami,'' said Agaev, the Russian
ambassador.

Low-Level Thugs

Among the exceptions were Viktor Goriainov, 46, and Grigori Verbliski, 45,
whom police now describe as low-level mobsters.

The two got into a spat at the La Florida rented villa in this resort, a
fun-and-sun mecca three hours drive south of Bogota. Police will only say
that Goriainov pulled the trigger on Verbliski, and later dumped his body
in an Andean ravine. Goriainov is now in Bogota's La Modelo Prison. Prison
officials said he did not want to meet with a reporter.

If few Russian drug traffickers come to Colombia currently, that may be
about to change -- dramatically.

Starting this fall, cruise ships chartered by Russian travel agencies will
dock at Colombia's Caribbean island of San Andres and the coastal resort of
Cartagena.

Law enforcement officials say as many 1,500 Russians a month may visit
Colombia. Some of them, they add, will be ``mules'' used to transport a
steady quantity of cocaine and heroin back to Russia.

Herald staff writer Juan O. Tamayo and Herald research manager Liz Donovan
contributed to this report.