Russian mafia

Russian organized crime or Russian mafia (росси́йская ма́фия, ру́сская ма́фия), otherwise known as Bratva (братва́), is a collective of various organized crime elements originating in the former Soviet Union. The initialism OPG is Organized Criminal (prestupnaya in Russian) Group, used to refer to any of the Russian mafia groups, sometimes modified with a specific name, e.g. Orekhovskaya OPG. Sometimes the initialism is translated and OCG is used. Organized crime in Russia began in the Russian Empire, but it was not until the Soviet era that vory v zakone ("thieves-in-law") emerged as leaders of prison groups in forced labor camps, and their honor code became more defined. With the end of World War II, the death of Joseph Stalin, and the fall of the Soviet Union, more gangs emerged in a flourishing black market, exploiting the unstable governments of the former republics. Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, said that the Russian mafia posed the greatest threat to US national security in the mid-1990s. In 2012, there were as many as 6,000 groups, with more than 200 of them having a global reach. Criminals of these various groups are either former prison members, corrupt officials and business leaders, people with ethnic ties, or people from the same region with shared criminal experiences and leaders. In December 2009, Timur Lakhonin, the head of the Russian National Central Bureau of Interpol, stated "Certainly, there is crime involving our former compatriots abroad, but there is no data suggesting that an organized structure of criminal groups comprising former Russians exists abroad", while in August 2010, Alain Bauer, a French criminologist, said that it "is one of the best structured criminal organizations in Europe, with a quasi-military operation." Since the 1980s, the Russian mafia has been among the most powerful, dangerous and feared criminal organizations in the world, and as of 2022, the organization remains to be among the world's largest, deadliest and most powerful crime syndicates.