Putin’s appointment was a shock to everyone—and a disaster for me. I met him soon after his appointment. I was still technically suspended but one day Berezovsky called me. “Alexander, could you go to Putin and tell him everything that you have told me? And everything that you have not. He is new at the Service, you know, and would benefit from an insider’s view.”
Before our meeting, I spent all night drawing up a chart with names, places, links—everything.
I arrived with two colleagues, but Putin wanted to see me alone. It must be incredibly tough for him, I thought. We were of the same rank, and I imagined myself in his shoes—a mid-level operativnik suddenly put in charge of some hundred seasoned generals with all their vested interests, connections and dirty secrets.
I did not know how to salute him without causing embarrassment. Should I say “Comrade Colonel” as was required by the code? But he pre-empted me and got up from his desk and shook my hand. He seemed even shorter than on TV.
From that very first moment I felt that he was not sincere. He avoided eye contact and behaved as if he was not the Director, but an actor playing a role. He looked at my chart, appearing to study it, and asked a couple of random questions.
I knew he could not have grasped the details in the cursory glance he had given it. “Shall I leave the chart?” I asked.
“No, no, thank you. You keep it. It’s your work.”
I gave him another list I had compiled: “These officers are clean. I know for sure that you can rely on them in the war on corruption.” Number one on the list was a colleague called General Trofimov. “There are honest people in the system,” I said. “We could bring the situation under control.” He nodded, acting as though in full agreement. He kept my files on Colonel Khokholkov and his links to the Uzbek drug barons and protection rackets. He said we would keep in touch and took my home number.
But he never called. Many months later, I got the chance to study my own file and I learned that he had ordered Internal Affairs to start a case against me right after that meeting. I regretted many of the names I had handed over. It seemed I had given them to the enemy as well as revealing just how much I knew.
Shortly afterwards, I was fired from the FSB. Before I left, a former boss at the Anti-Terrorist Centre went to Putin to put in a word on my behalf. Returning from the meeting, he looked at me, shook his head and said: “I do not envy you, Alexander. There is common money involved.”
I did not understand then what he meant by “common money”. Now I do. He was referring to Colonel Khokholkov and his dealings with the Uzbek drug barons. This understanding came to me many months later. I discovered that Putin’s connection with Colonel Khokholkov dated back to the time when Putin was a Deputy for Economic Affairs to the Mayor of St Petersburg.
I had an informer in St Petersburg’s city hall. He kept an eye on the criminal connections of city officials. When the Mayor lost the elections, Putin lost his job. One day my informant had a beer with him. Putin was down and out and could not get hold of money he had stashed away. He was under surveillance by the new Mayor’s people. My informant took pity on Putin and gave him $2,000 as an “open-ended” loan. When Putin became President, he repaid him by appointing him an economic adviser.
As for me, my years of service at the FSB were rewarded by being fired and thrown in jail. It was a year before I was released pending trial. My informant came to see me following my release: “Putin will squash you,” he said, “and no one can help you. He has no choice because he was working with the Uzbek group. There is lots of common money there.”
I could not believe that he was using the same phrase: common money. He was telling me that Putin had been directly linked with the mob that my investigations into Colonel Khokholkov had led me to. How close had I come to his name?
My informant smiled: “Remember the smuggling of rare metal in the early Nineties? Putin was in charge of export licensing. You worked on organized crime? Tell me, could anyone export a kilo of metal in those days without the mob? They would blow up the whole train. And he was right at the centre of it all. All his licensees were mob fronts.”
The two of us were talking in a restaurant. “Vladimir fell for power very quickly,” confided my informant. “Look, when Yeltsin drove to the Kremlin, only one traffic lane was cleared. But for Vladimir they close down the whole highway. He is not fit for power. He has no political skills and a certain weird way of thinking. He is dangerous.”
My friend got drunk and I took him out to the lobby. “Are you crazy?” I said. “All of this will be at the FSB tomorrow morning. Don’t you know that I am watched?”
But it was too late. Three weeks after that conversation, he was killed by a hit-man from a passing bicycle. A direct hit at close range. I learned about it from TV. A presidential aide has been shot. One of many during the past decade.
Concluding this story, I’m quite sure there will be an explosion of protests about my unsubstantiated allegations that President Putin is personally involved at least in a cover-up of organized criminal activities connected with drug traffic in Russia and Europe. People will demand hard proof. I am not going to try to prove anything. I am an operativnik, not a prosecutor. My job is to collect operational information and analyse it. This is my analysis:
First: two independent sources report that a suspect—call him Mr P. — has “common money” with Colonel Khokholkov at the FSB. One of the sources gets killed as soon as his connection to me is compromised.
Second: Colonel Khokholkov is tied to the Uzbek drug organization. He lives lavishly, well beyond his means.
Next: Mr P. protects Colonel Khokholkov. He neutralizes his internal opponents.
Further: Mr P. is fully aware that Colonel Khokholkov is involved with the Uzbeks.
Finally: when the crimes were committed, Mr P. held a key position in a northern metropolis, Russia’s gateway to Europe. Much of the drug transit went through his city. This made him of tremendous value to the Uzbek friends of his friend Colonel Khokholkov.
As an operativnik, I have every reason to suspect Mr P. at least in criminal complicity. There is nothing unusual in that—in my time I have seen hundreds of similar situations. Sure, Mr P. happens to be the President of Russia. But the crimes were committed when he was a humble Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg.
Admittedly, the evidence against Mr P. is indirect and cannot be used in a court. And, of course, if Mr P. were not the President, I would not have publicized it, but would have opened a case and brought him in for questioning.
But he is the President, and there is no possibility of questioning him. He is accountable by a different standard. So he must respond to my questions before the public.
But first, I would like to see what will happen to the newspaper that prints this story.
Lockerbie Bombing
On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, bound from Heathrow for New York’s JFK International Airport, exploded at an altitude of 31,000 feet (9,450m). All 259 passengers aboard the Boeing 747–121 were killed, along with 11 residents of Lockerbie, southern Scotland, hit by plane wreckage falling from the sky.
In the ensuing crash investigation, forensic experts determined that 12–16 ounces (340–450g) of plastic explosive had been detonated in the airplane’s forward cargo hold. Since this was a US plane with mostly US citizens aboard, the bombing was widely regarded as an attack on the US. After a three-year joint investigation by the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the FBI, indictments for murder in connection with the Lockerbie bombing were issued on 13 November 1991 against Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and Khalifah Fhimahmen, the LAA manager at Malta’s Luqa Airport.
Libya had a clear motive for the Lockerbie crime: revenge for the 1986 Air Force raid on the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi which killed, among others, the adopted daughter of the Libyan president, Muammar al-
