Alexander Bratersky

The mobsters who gathered last week at Moscow's prestigious Vagankovskoye cemetery for the funeral of notorious mafia chief Vyacheslav Ivankov (aka ‘Yaponchik') were doing more than simply bidding farewell to the boss - they were plotting their next move in an expected gang war.

That's the conclusion of leading Russian crime experts, who say the memorial service for Ivankov, who died earlier this month of gunshot wounds inflicted in a July sniper attack, was a shodka, or gangsters' meeting, where the slain man's allies plan to take revenge.

These kind of symbolic events always have an impact and could well lead to allies of Ivankov, an old-school vor v zakone, or thief-in-law, starting a gang war over his death, Alexei Volkov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Security Committee, told The Moscow News.

Volkov, a Soviet-era police general who specialised in fighting organised crime, added that after Ivankov's death the gangs would pause to consider their next steps - so the police should act quickly.

Despite the presence of various mob figures at the funeral, Kommersant reported that Moscow police officials denied that ceremony was used as a gathering.

A series of amendments to the Criminal Code, passed by parliament days after Ivankov's funeral, will increase prison terms for gang leaders from 12 to a maximum of 20 years.

Even taking part in a criminal gathering could be enough to face criminal charges, according to the amendments.

But it will be difficult to prove that people at such events as last week's funeral were participating in criminal conspiracies, said Volkov, who voted for the amendments.

"Something should be done, because these people have enormous power, they are like a parallel [state]," he said.

But not everyone agrees about the threat posed by the mafia.

Their 1990s heyday, when criminal groups controlled the most lucrative parts of the Russian economy and even political power, is long gone, said former President Boris Yeltsin's security chief, Alexander Korzhakov.

Volkov, who previously served as head of the Amur region police department, recalled that seven of the nearby Khabarovsk region thieves-in-law were trying to infiltrate the local authorities, offering security services to officials. It led to a complete paralysis among the authorities, he said.

Ivankov, who rose through the ranks of the criminal underworld to become one of the Soviet Union's most respected mafia bosses, emigrated to the United States in the early 1990s.

He was arrested by the FBI in 1995 for attempting to extort $8.5 million from two Russian emigre businessmen. Ivankov in turn accused the businessmen of stealing the money from shareholders of the now-defunct Chara Bank.

In the US, the Russian mafia operated largely within the Russian-speaking emigre community, but were more successful in Eastern and Western Europe, where their activities damaged the credibility of several prominent Russian businesses abroad.

One example of a company suffering from alleged links to mafia figures was Lukoil. The oil firm made several attempts to bid for Spain's Repsol, but they were blocked as the Spanish prosecutors accused the company of links to Russian vor v zakone Zakhari Kalashov, an associate of Ivankov's.

According to an investigation by Forbes Russia magazine, citing documents from Spanish prosecutors, Lukoil was among the companies that Kalashov used for money laundering. Kalashov, who is currently awaiting trial in Spain, was a Lukoil shareholder, according to Swiss prosecutors. Among other names connected to the case was Ivankov's bitter enemy, Georgian vor v zakone Tariel Oniani.

Oniani was also a Lukoil shareholder, according to the Spanish police force's investigators.

Lukoil denied that Kalashov received money from Lukoil and said that Spanish prosecutors did not produce any evidence linking Oniani to Lukoil, Forbes reported.

Oniani left Spain after local police started a crackdown on local Russian mafia in 2005. In June 2009 he was arrested in Moscow in connection with the kidnapping of a Georgian businessman, and is currently being held at the city's Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention centre.

The chief of the Moscow Interior Ministry's investigative department, General Iskander Galimov, told reporters earlier this month that 40 criminal bosses have been jailed so far this year, double the figure for 2008.

While about 800 thieves-in-law are thought to be operating in Russia, organised crime groups are responsible for only 4 per cent of all crimes, according to the Interior Ministry.

Oniani has been feuding with another powerful vor v zakone, Aslan Usoyan (aka Grandpa Khasan), who was supported by Ivankov.

After Oniani's arrest, senior crime figures received a letter, signed jointly by Ivankov and Usoyan, according to Ogonyok magazine, which obtained a copy of the letter. In the letter, Ivankov and Usoyan called for Oniani to be stripped of his vor v zakone ranking and punished.

Mark Kruter, a former Ivankov attorney and friend who wrote a book about the late gangster, has said that Ivankov's allies would likely have Oniani killed at the first opportunity, and that the country's Georgian mobsters would face a tough time.

Kruter believes that Ivankov was killed because he sided with Khasan against Oniani in attempting to chisel in on construction rackets connected with the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Contracts for the Olympics are expected to be worth some $80 billion.

Earlier this year a sidekick of Usoyan's, Alek Minalyan (aka Sochinsky) who was involved in money laundering through Sochi construction businesses, was killed in Moscow, by members of the Oniani gang, Moscow police said.

Even if the Sochi connection is unproven, crime experts said that Georgian and Russian gangs would likely fight turf battles across the country. Other battles will also be fought within the Russian criminal fraternity as gangsters now care less about the rules of the vory v zakone than they did in the 1990s.

"Before there was respect towards the thieves-in-law, but today there are no rules or principles," said one young former organised crime member from Ulan Ude, who identified himself only as Roman.

Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB colonel and a State Duma deputy for the Just Russia faction, agreed, predicting an intensified struggle for money and influence.

"There is no unity in the criminal world," Gudkov said. "Before they used to say that a thief-in-law should have no property, but today everyone is fighting for a bigger piece of the pie."