The gang of Aslan Gagiev

In 2004, a gang of assassins was organized by Ossetians Aslan Gagiev, nicknamed Dzhako. The main unit of the gang’s killers was headed by the namesake of Gagiev - a native of South Ossetia , an employee of the South Ossetian counterintelligence Oleg Gagiev nicknamed Bote (Kid). In total, the gang included more than forty people (including two police officers and one prosecutor), many of whom participated in the war with Georgia in 1992 . The gang took orders for murders of any complexity. The killers used rented apartments, stolen cars, fake documents, and SIM cards of various mobile operators. They brought weapons from South Ossetia.

Oleg Gagiev personally took orders for the killings. Gagiev’s base was in Moscow , and his “right hand” Alexander Dzhussoyev regularly flew by plane to the capital for meetings with the leader, after which he returned to Vladikavkaz and transmitted Gagiev’s orders to kill a specific person. Dzhussoevu obeyed Inal Zasseyev, Temur Kudziev, Ivan Bagaev, Inal Astaev and gang driver Alan Alborov. The gang was covered by the UBOP operative Rafael Kalagov, deputy district prosecutor Murat Gabeev, and Givi Slonov, an employee of the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs.

According to the former deputy head of the organized crime and banditry department of the Organized Crime Control Department at the Ministry of Internal Affairs of North Ossetia, Oleg Gagiev and the bandits subordinate to him committed the killing of three people back in 2003 . Criminal cases of these killings were sent to court, but the bandits were never convicted.

The bandits committed their first high-profile crime in January 2008 , seriously wounding the former head of the administration of the head of North Ossetia, the rector of one of the private universities of Vladikavkaz, Sergei Takoyev in the center of Vladikavkaz ^[1] .

In March of the same year, the bandits ambushed and shot the vehicles of the head of the department for organized crime of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of North Ossetia Mark Metsaev with machine guns . A fatally wounded police colonel managed to ram one killer car, blocking his path, but failed to escape from the trap and died almost immediately. By decree of the President of Russia, Mark Metsaev was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage .

In summer, bandits at one of the restaurants shot police major Ilya Kasradze.

At the end of October, at the entrance to Vladikavkaz, Gagiev’s bandits shot a car with machine guns in which the head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic, Vitaly Cheldiev, along with his 20-year-old son Zaur. They both died on the spot.

The bandits killed Metsaev and Cheldiev, because they actively fought with their group. Law enforcement officials tried several times to prosecute Bote and his bandits, but Gagiev managed to avoid punishment every time. Bote got into the pre-trial detention center several times, and every time he was released.

On November 26, the mayor of Vladikavkaz Vitaly Karaev was killed by killers at the gates of his own house. Karaev knew that they wanted to kill him, he even ordered himself an armored car in Moscow. The driver who was supposed to deliver this car to North Ossetia was killed in Moscow.

The bandits, knowing the mayor’s movement schedule, watched him from a nearby street, and when he left his house with his guard, one of the gang’s members, Inal Ostaev, shot Vitaly Karaev with a sniper rifle .

At the end of December of the same year, two bandits with machine guns blocked the exit from the courtyard of the car with the former Vladikavkaz mayor Kazbek Pagiev and, when he stopped, they shot him. Together with the official, his driver also died. In the spring of 2009, gang members severely wounded police lieutenant colonel Aslan Kachmazov, who was investigating the murders and other crimes organized by the Kid.

In 2004-2005, the owner of National Capital Bank Dmitry Plytnik, the unwritten owner of Kredittrust Bank Alexander Slesarev, and the chairman of the board of Kutuzovsky bank Oleg Novoselsky were killed in Moscow.

Before death, the plaster was brutally tortured in a car wash, wrapping naked in film. After the banker signed a series of documents and blank sheets of paper, he was beheaded, and his body was thrown into the river with iron pancakes attached to it from the bar. His corpse was found in April 2005 on the coast in the Dubna region, they were identified only thanks to DNA expertise.

The banker Oleg Novoselsky was concreted alive in a barrel. He was dying for a long time and painfully: for a long time the barrel was kept in the basement of the office on Chistye Prudy , where Novoselsky was lured under the pretext of delivering fireworks to celebrate the New Year. Then the barrel with the corpse was thrown into the Moscow Canal , where investigators found it 10 years later, interrogating one of the killers.

In October 2005, bandits fired at cars at the Kashirskoye Shosse in the Moscow Region, where the unwritten owner of Sodbiznesbank and Credittrust Bank, which went bankrupt during the financial crisis of 2004, Alexander Slesarev and his relatives. Together with the banker, his wife and 15-year-old daughter died, and three more people (including the 80-year-old nun) were injured.

In 2006, bandits killed the former chairman of the board of the National Capital Bank, Philip Degtyarev, who at that time worked as the financial director of the Vysotka club.

On October 2, 2012, on the Kronstadt Boulevard of Moscow, the former gang member Sergei Beglaryan was killed, who blackmailed the bandits by exposing them.

In total, investigators established the gang's involvement in 80 murders, most of which were committed in North Ossetia. Moreover, they are sure that far from all such episodes have been identified ^[2] .

Only after the high-profile assassination of the mayor of Vladikavkaz, did investigators from the Main Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the North Caucasus and Southern Federal Districts, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB of Russia join in the investigation.

Alan Alborov, Inal Ostaev and former employee of the Organized Crime Control Department Rafael Kalagov were arrested. Oleg Gagiev and Alexander Dzhussoev were detained in Moscow. Gagiev refused to cooperate with the investigation, Dzhussoyev first testified, but then refused them.

Former police officer Givi Slonov, former deputy district prosecutor Murat Gabeev, Inal Zasseyev, Temur Kudziev, Ivan Bagaev and Robert Bagaev managed to escape and were put on the federal and international wanted list. Some of them were detained in August 2014 ^[3] , Aslan Gagiev - in January 2015 in Austria ^[4] , Oleg Dzarakhokhov and Ivan Bagaev - in early 2015 in Vladikavkaz and Montenegro, respectively ^{[5] [6]} , Arthur Dzhioev - in April 2015 in Greece ^[7] , SOBR officers of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Moscow Region Andrei Sankin and Victor Pronin - in November 2015 ^[8] .

Law enforcement agencies had to do a great job to gather evidence of the guilt of the bandits. For example, to find parts of weapons thrown by bandits into the Terek , it was necessary to drain the riverbed near Vladikavkaz ^[9] .

During the investigation, witnesses were constantly threatened, and investigators tried to compromise, including by spreading rumors about them on the Internet.

Investigators were able to solve not only the murder of Vitaly Karaev, but also other crimes - including the murder of the former Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania Kazbek Pagiev ^[9] .

Alan Alborov, Rafael Kalagov, Inal Ostaev and Alexander Dzhussoev were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. The trial of Oleg Gagiev took place in Rostov-on-Don , the defendant was guarded by riot policemen armed with machine guns. In March 2012, Gagiev was sentenced. Bote was found guilty of seven murders by the North Caucasian District Military Court and not deserving of leniency. Oleg Gagiev was sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of one million rubles.

On September 2, 2015, the North Caucasian District Military Court (the case was examined there, since one of the defendants had the status of a military serviceman during the crimes) sentenced six members of the Gagiev gang for the murder of nine people: Oleg Khamitsev - to life imprisonment, Artur Tibilov - for 22 years , Chermen Sugarova - for 20 years, Valery Pliev - for 18 years, Tamerlan Kozyrev for 17 years and Azamat Sidakova - for 16 years ^[10] .

Aslan Gagiev, who was arrested in Austria, was released on bail of 100,000 euros in March 2016 as part of the so-called Bulgarian case - during his arrest, he found a fake passport of a Bulgarian citizen. In accordance with Austrian law, an accused pending extradition cannot be detained for longer than the period that threatens him in the country where he can be sent. In Bulgaria, he was facing a year of imprisonment for using a fake passport, but he had already spent that time in an Austrian prison ^[11] . In June 2016, Bulgaria withdrew the request for the extradition of Gagiev ^[12] .

On September 12, 2017, the Vienna Higher Land Court granted the request of the Prosecutor General of Russia to extradite Gagiev. However, before sending Gagiev to the airport, his lawyers submitted a certificate stating that Gagiev had developed a rare form of aerophobia during his stay in an Austrian prison, in which the accused may not survive the flight to Russia. As a result, Gagiev’s extradition was postponed ^[13] .

In June 2018, Aslan Gagiev was extradited to Russia ^[14] . Shortly before that, the website “Freedom to Aslan Gagiev” appeared on the Internet with video certificates ^{[15] of the} inhabitants of Ossetia, which Gagiev helped; the videos are provided with English subtitles, activists collected signatures under an appeal to the Austrian authorities with a request to refuse extradition ^[16] .

• Newspaper Once Upon a Time in Russia
• Honest Detective - Baby Bote and his team
• Newspaper Kommersant - a selection of articles on the topic
• The newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" - The leader of the gang that killed the mayor of Vladikavkaz, received a life sentence
• “MK”: Gagiev’s gang posed as an FSB structure and carried out economic “expansion” in Germany
• Lenta.ru “We must kill!” Russia's chief killer created a sect of ruthless killers. His "brothers" eliminated 60 people
• Lenta.ru: Bloody Harvest. All the crimes of the gang of Dzhako, the chief killer of Russia: information from Lenta.ru