vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #605 / Crime watch / Reading article...

Twenty one men, allegedly members of an organized crime ring, will face charges in a Khabarovsk court on their involvement in robberies, extortions, drug and arms trafficking- altogether 29 cases, police officials reported.

The organized group committed crimes in the towns of Chegdomyn and Urgal, in the Khabarovsk region, during the past five years, deputy head of the investigation branch for the region’s Inner Affairs Department Mikhail Ulyanchenko recently told reporters.

According to Ulyanchenko, the investigation took more than a year and a half. Two criminal bosses and their subordinates will face charges in 29 cases, Khabarovsk news reports said.

The accused members of the criminal group all came from a notorious Khabarovsk crime empire called “Obshchak”. Khabarovsk police launched a clamp down on the group's leadership in 2005 and in December of 2005 Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev reported that, "police wiped out organized crime in the Khabarovsk territory."

In criminal jargon, ‘obshchak’ means a common fund created by group members to finance criminal activities as well as to support inmates and their families.

“Several members of the Obshchak crime ring have been sentenced to prison terms and some of them are still under investigation,” Ulyanchenko said. ”Now we are terminating the remains of this group and similar cases are being investigated by other police departments of the Khabarovsk region,” he added.

In 2007 Khabarovsk investigators sent more than 790 criminal cases to court, bringing 914 criminals to justice, Ulyanchenko noted.