everything to stop him.”
URPO was the acronym for a newly established top-secret unit at the FSB, and Evgeny Khokholkov was a colonel in the anti-terrorist directorate. More than that, he was General Voloch’s subordinate-turned-rival.
The two men had fallen foul of each other earlier that year when Colonel Khokholkov masterminded the assassination of a Chechnyan separatist leader. An air-to-ground missile was used to home in on a satellite phone signal—there wasn’t much left of him. It was a sophisticated and costly operation with a hefty budget that, as boss of the Anti-Terrorist Directorate, General Voloch was expected to sign off.
But when the dust had settled nearly a million dollars was missing and Voloch demanded a full account. He was never given one. His subordinate had powerful protectors within the bureau and the matter was papered over, much to General Voloch’s embarrassment.
Now Colonel Khokholkov was being handed his own directorate to run—a special operations unit that would be allowed to break the law—and he was likely be promoted to full general.
In fact, the very idea of URPO came up as a result of the Chechen experience. In that undeclared war, secret services enjoyed generous operational freedom: they could detain, interrogate and kill without legal constraints. But while no one would think of “due process” before firing a missile in Chechnya, back in Moscow the legal niceties had to be observed.
So the agency bosses decided that it would be handy to have an autonomous, secret unit to carry out occasional “special tasks”, and thanks to his track record Colonel Khokholkov was the natural choice to lead it.
For General Voloch it was a devastating appointment—effectively placing his one-time subordinate in charge of a rival operational division with greater powers than his own. His response to the news of his rival’s success and his reason for summoning me to FSB headquarters that day was to give me a secret assignment. I was to dig out all the dirt I could find on this Colonel Khokholkov.
So began a chain of events that would show just how deep the stain of corruption ran—and which would lead me to Vladimir Putin.
It was not the first time that Colonel Khokholkov had been brought to my attention. Three years earlier, as a young operativnik, I had helped unmask a group of corrupt FSB officers, most of them of Uzbek origin.
My report became known as the Uzbek file and Colonel Khokholkov’s name surfaced in these investigations. But although several of his colleagues were transferred or fired, he remained untouched. I had found no direct evidence against him.
Shortly after I began digging again into his background, I was contacted by a source at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Organized Crime Unit of the Moscow City Police had some explosive material on Colonel Khokholkov, I was told.
He had been videotaped in the company of major crime figures as they gathered to carve up the Russian drugs market. This explained Khokholkov’s wealth: he owned a posh restaurant on Moscow’s Kutuzovsky Avenue and a country house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And one night, he lost some $120,000 gambling at Casino Leningrad.
It was no surprise to me that the police should have investigated an officer of the FSB. At the time, both the FSB and the police were so deeply involved in the city’s protection rackets they were virtually at war. Some of their rivaly was over who would benefit fromthe supply of drugs pouring from Afghanistan into Europe.
I did not find the videotape, but I did find enough evidence against Khokholkov to charge him—if my superiors would agree.
General Voloch was reluctant to take the decisions,so I took my file to the newly appointed FSB Director, Nikolai Kovaliov.
The meeting was brief and the Director defensive. He shrugged, “What can I do?” when told of the evidence against Khokholkov. I later learned that he had ordered an Internal Affairs file on Khokholkov to be closed the moment he was put in charge.
While the meeting at the Director’s office failed to affect Colonel Khokholkov’s career, it certainly change mine. Before long, in the same office, the Dirtector asked me to become his personal agent in his new department, the URPO.
I was speechless. Work for Colonel Khokholkov?
Reading my mind, the Dierector said: “Forget about Khokholkov. We checked him out. There is nothing there. But it would not harm if I had my own man keeping an eye on him. Agree? Call any time.”
It was an order, not an offer.
So, for many months, I found myself working for the man I had been tasked to expose. But it was only a matter of time before the comromising videotape of Colonel Khokholkov’s meeting to extort money from Moscow’s drug barons surfaced once more.
The incident started with a simple enough case.A local shopowner had seen visited by a man claiming to be a police officer and demanding protection money.
The demands went up and up from $5,000 a month to $9,000 then to $15,000 and more. Next the shopowner received a visit at his home—he was beaten up and threatened. He turned to the FSB.
We identified the vehicle used to visit the shopkeeper that night and it led us to a dingy den where we found a police officer, several men and two terrified girls, one under age. Both showed signs of abuse and had been raped.
We summoned the local police, who obtained a search warrant. The men were booked for rape and a local investigator began questioning them.
Then a remarkable thing happened. A lawyer for the policeman we had arrested showed up, but instead of dealing with his client’s situation he told us that for the past three years the policeman had been forcing him to provide services to companies he had under protection, without any pay. But he wanted to take the opportunity to come clean.
I took the lawyer to the Lubyanka FSB headquarters and taped his testimony. He told us about the massive involvement of the Moscow City Police Organized Crime Unit in criminal activity. His evidence implicated the head of the unit and high officials at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I was discovering that corruption was everywhere in this city—and I was to find out that it went right to the very top.
When the case was completed and everything was ready for the prosecutor, I felt a certain uneasiness about bringing it to Colonel Khokholkov for signature. Investigating such police corruption was a dangerous business when I knew that the tapes linking my own boss with similar protection rackets were still sitting in the vaults of the Moscow City Police.
As it was, Colonel Khokholkov was conveniently unwell, so his deputy signed off the case. And it was only a matter of time before the organization we were investigating revealed their own evidence about our boss. When it happened, it was calmly and deliberately done. Two police officers showed up at the FSB reception and left the tape of Colonel Khokholkov extorting protection money from drug barons. There was a clear message—forget the investigation or we’ll bring down your boss.
I knew about it the next day when the irate Colonel barged into my office: “What have you been doing? Who authorized this? Why did you go to the prosecutors? Get the case back.”
The case was recalled and I never saw the material again. Most of the criminals are still walking around. The policeman we had arrested was allowed to slip out to Turkey, with much of his money. As for me, I never felt more betrayed. But I was knee-deep in the dirty system in which men like Putin would flourish.
Shortly afterwards, I myself became the centre of a scandal when my unit was ordered to plan the assassination of Boris Berezovsky, the entrepreneur-turned-politician who was close to President Yeltsin. No one told us of the reason, but there was no need to: Berezovsky was the most visible of oligarchs, a billionaire tycoon whose Liberal Russia political party stood against the corruption that flowed through the heart of the FSB and our own unit. He was a threat.
I and five other officers refused to carry out the order. Instead, we went directly to Berezovsky and warned him about the plot. We also complained to the Prosecutor-General. The FSB pressured us to withdraw our complaints and suspended the whole group of officers.
Behind the scenes, Berezovsky was pulling levers in the Kremlin and persuaded Boris Yeltsin to turn on our department. Within a few weeks, our secret directorate was disbanded. Colonel Khokholkov was transferred, FSB Director Kovaliov fired. In his place, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin, a little-known Colonel working inside the Kremlin.
