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. Comrade Nozyrev, if a store manager or shop clerk takes a bribe,even a million rubles, it doesn t matter to me while I m on this job, Isaid, as my colleagues looked on in silence. But when a law enforce-ment officer takes even ten rubles, this is a crime that has to be pun-ished.The court gave this prosecutor the right sentence, ten years.Thepeople you keep under investigation as spies will never be caught andnever go to jail.Corruption has to be fought.It s eating away at ourcountry.My words were an affront to Nozyrev, but he sat there silently andmoved on to the next order of business.He would not, however, for-get my insubordination.Later he would settle the score.0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page 370370 SPYMASTERNext we received word of extensive corruption in the mining re-gion of Slantsy.The local Mafia, led by an Armenian man, was re-portedly bribing district officials and then stealing shipments ofimported Finnish goods meant for the miners.We placed wiretaps onthe phones of several people, including the Armenian, and in a matterof weeks gathered enough information to convict a handful of localMafiosi and some low-level officials.Our investigation was almostblown when Lev Zaikov s sister, who was involved with the localMafia, got wind of our activities and tipped off her friends.We were gaining momentum, and in late 1986 another police in-former told us about extensive corruption involving the export oftimber from the Leningrad region to the southern republics of theSoviet Union.Our informant said that Soviet  businessmen fromthe southern republics were bribing numerous Leningrad officials,taking large amounts of timber out of the region at cut-rate pricesand selling the wood at enormous profit in the south.Joined by teninvestigators, we uncovered evidence that as many as forty  business-men and local officials were involved in the scam, and that morethan 3 million rubles in bribes (worth about $4 million at the time)had changed hands.Among those taking bribes were the deputychairman of the Leningrad regional Soviet, several district Commu-nist Party bosses, and the head of the Leningrad region s agriculturedepartment.We arrested several dozen people, almost all of them the men whohad paid the bribes, but the investigation didn t stop there.Some ofthose arrested gave evidence against even more important officials,including the deputy director of the Leningrad Lumber Associationand a director of the Leningrad regional railway.The corruption wasfar more widespread than anyone had imagined, and our investiga-tion was now reaching into the highest levels of Leningrad govern-ment and industry.Therein lay the problem.I went to Nozyrev and laid out the scope of the investigation. Are you crazy, or what? the Leningrad KGB chief responded. You ve already arrested forty people.What more do you want?0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page 371EXI LE 371I then went to the regional prosecutor and explained the evidenceshowing that far bigger fish were involved in the unfolding briberyscandal.I told him that the overwhelming majority of people we hadarrested were businessmen and those who offered bribes, not theLeningrad officials, who were on the take. Look, Oleg, said the Leningrad prosecutor. We ve been cooper-ating so beautifully.We ve arrested forty people.That s enough.Whydon t we close this case?Next I went to Gennadi Voschinin, the regional Party official re-sponsible for law enforcement and the man who had initially ap-proved my investigation of the corrupt prosecutor.Voschinin looked over the papers I had brought, detailing the re-gion s massive bribe taking. What do you need all this for? asked Voschinin. You ve alreadydestroyed that lumber gang. The men we arrested are just businessmen who paid bribes to getthe lumber, I responded. It s the ones who let them have the timberillegally and take the bribes who are the real culprits, and they re stillsitting in their offices in the Party Committee and the local govern-ment.Those are the ones who sold the power entrusted to them bythe people.They are much more dangerous than those who gave thebribes.And we re talking about 3 million rubles. Why are you so bloodthirsty? said Voschinin. Why do youwant more heads to roll? Isn t forty enough for you? You want moreblood? I m sorry, I can t help you.Just wrap up the case.There s nouse going on. I m sorry, I replied. It would be dishonest to stop now.I m doingwhat I m here to do.I won t close the case. Just think it over, replied Voschinin. That s all we ask.That same day, Nozyrev summoned me to his office at KGB head-quarters on Liteiny Prospect. What is it you re trying to start, a mutiny? he shouted. Enoughfooling around.You haven t made a single case of anti-Soviet activityor espionage in the region.It s time you did some real work.0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page 372372 SPYMASTERI told him he was wrong, that KGB Chairman Chebrikov himselfhad argued for the need to step up the fight against corruption. Enough of your demagoguery! Nozyrev snapped, and orderedme out of his office.Within a few days, I learned that KGB officials in Moscow andLeningrad had begun trying to compromise my chief investigators andwere pressuring them to stop working with me.One investigator was ac-cused of extorting bribes from a criminal; another was accused of steal-ing diamonds during an investigation; a third was accused by neighborsin his communal apartment of beating his wife.The accusations werefalse, but the KGB was turning the heat up on my investigators, and oneby one they withdrew from the case.Clearly our investigation had beentoo aggressive and reached too high into the Party structure.Now my su-periors were determined to put an end to the work of my group.About that time, I had finished reading the three-volume KGB casefile on the brilliant Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.She had beenunder suspicion since 1927, first as a Trotskyite and then as an Amer-ican spy.Her file was full of nasty reports from the legions of inform-ers who had been persuaded to work against the poet.They spreadrumors and innuendo, one woman even alleging that Akhmatova wasa lesbian and had fondled the informer s breasts.The file, which Itook from the KGB archives, laid out the sordid picture of how theKGB had hounded this woman and monitored her every move fordecades.And as I read through the documents and thought of myown growing struggle with the security apparatus, a line from one ofAkhmatova s poems kept running through my mind:  Everything isstolen, betrayed, sold.I knew I would get no help in Leningrad with our investigation,and so I decided to write a letter to the prosecutor general in Moscow.In it, I laid out the extent of our corruption inquiry and reported thatLeningrad officials were now covering up what we had found.I heard nothing for a month; indeed, the prosecutor general neveracknowledged receiving my letter.One day, however, Voschinin sum-moned me, and this time he made no effort to conceal his anger.0465014453-Kalugin.qxd 11/24/08 10:25 AM Page 373EXI LE 373 We didn t expect this from you, Voschinin said. Why did youhave to complain to the prosecutor general? Listen, we in Leningradknow best how to handle these affairs.Do you think they will help usin Moscow? Well, they won t.We don t take orders from Moscow [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]