Moscow Regional Court convicted Konstantin Piskarev, also known as Kostya Bolshoi, a gang leader who committed at least 21 murders, has been sentenced to life imprisonment. The process lasted seven years – as of November 2019.
Several other gang members were convicted along with Piskarev:
- Sergei Alexandrov received 24 years
- Dmitry Yurov – 17 years old
- Yuri Berzhenov – 15 years old
- Andrei Stolyarov – 13 years old
- Damir Kapkov – 12 years old
- Sergey Barabashkin – 11 years old.
Two others – Alexander Zamyatin and Nikolai Yurov – received 9 years and 3 months and 8 years and 9 months respectively, but had already served these terms in pretrial detention.
In addition, four members of the gang – Sergei Bezrukov, Dmitry Lobyshev, Dmitry Mishin, and Denis Zemtsov – previously struck a deal with the investigation and received eight to nine years each. Zemtsov has already served this sentence. The last known member of the gang, Igor Saryan, is on the international wanted list (he fled to Abkhazia).
Piskarev’s gang appeared in the 1990s and consisted mainly of former military personnel and athletes. Kostya Bolshoi got his nickname due to his height of about two meters and weight of more than 100 kilograms. Initially, he was part of the “brigade” of Alexander Zamyatin, sponsored by the organized crime group “Orekhovskaya”, was a bodyguard, “roof”, collector and business partner of Georgy Bertskhalava, at that time co-owner and vice-president (later president) of Balchug Bank. In the mid-1990s, he was under investigation on suspicion of several murders, but was released due to lack of evidence of his guilt.
After his release, Piskarev created his own gang, which included Zamyatin. She had her own business interests – for example, in Skyfood LLC, which supplies food to airports and airlines (its co-owner at one time was the same Georgy Bertskhalava). The gang protected many businesses – from Moscow markets to the Burevestnik Yacht Club on the Pirogovskoye reservoir in the Moscow region. Piskarev also ran his own business – in particular, he built shopping centers in the Moscow region.
Among other things, Piskarev was co-owner of the “Shield and Sword” restaurant in Moscow on Bolshaya Lubyanka Street, a stone’s throw from the FSB building. It is known that many intelligence officers visited there regularly.
Kostya Bolshoi and his accomplices were found guilty of 21 murders and four attempted murders. Among them is the murder of the deputy director of the Burevestnik Yacht Club, Sergei Kormilin, in 1998. The club became the de facto base of the gang, and Kormilin tried to get it out of there – which is why he was shot right there, on the shore of the Pirogovskoe reservoir.
In 1999, Piskarev was personally involved in the murder of Yan Shibilenko, a business partner with whom he had a business conflict. Shiplenko’s car was machine-gunned. His driver died with him.
Another episode is the murder of Vladimir Postyshev, former Deputy Minister of Justice and former First Deputy Head of the Federal Service for Insolvency and Financial Recovery, in 2003. Postyshev demanded $122,000 from Piskarev to help obtain the rights to produce the Becherovka drink in Russia. Piskarev strangled him with a noose.
In 2004, a gang killed Marat Gazizov, director of the Scientific Center for Legal Information of the Ministry of Justice, over a business dispute: he bought seven apartments at auction claimed by Piskarev structures.
In 2010, Joyce Mogashi, the owner of a vending machine company, was murdered at Sheremetyevo Airport. She refused to transfer the controlling stake to Piskarev. Kostya Bolshoi also personally participated in this murder.
The most famous incident was the murder of the mayor of Sergiev Posad, Yevgeny Dushko, in 2011. Piskarev held Dushko responsible for the fact that his company did not obtain permission from the city authorities to build a shopping center. He shot the mayor.
Among Piskarev’s victims were also his personal security guard Ivan Danilin (due to his drug addiction and, as a result, his unreliability) and the chief heater Alexander Orlov, who delayed the work. Piskarev took the latter into the forest, forced him to lie in a prepared grave and shot him.
Piskarev’s gang killed not only for its own benefit, but also for pay. For example, in 2003, an organized crime group in the Moscow region hired Piskarev to kill the leader of the hostile organized crime group Maxim Asen. Piskarev personally participated in the implementation of the “Contract”.
Piskarev and his accomplices were arrested in 2016-2017. The pre-trial investigation continued until November 2019. During it, several defendants agreed to testify against Piskarev in order to reduce their sentence. They tried to return the case to the prosecution; At trial, the jury was split four times. But the fifth unanimously condemned the accused.