The Mob in Skating?

Godfather, Were Are You? 

Did a reputed Russian gangster, currently under arrest, make the judge an offer she couldn't refuse?

"The only people with any money when the Soviet Union fell were the criminals. And they think that money can buy anything."

-- ANTONIO NICASO

Author, "Global Mafia"

By MARY MCNAMARA / Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Until this week, it was difficult to imagine the circumstances that would bring the terms "organized crime" and "ice dancing" into the same sentence. But the recent arrest of alleged Russian mobster Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov on charges that he rigged two contests in last year's Winter Olympics closed that cultural divide. Stories remarking on the long arm of the Russian mafia were accompanied by winsome portraits of figure-skating couples and, in print at least, the disorienting image of the French Skating Federation rubbing shoulders with Interpol and the FBI.

The obvious joke was made almost immediately by DJs and late-night comics. A figure-skating event fixed by the mob? Must be the work of Hollywood's very own "gay mafia."

Not unless they have an office in Uzbekistan, says U.S. Attorney James Comey. Tokhtakhounov, a native of that country, was, they allege, the brains behind a swap in which a French judge tweaked her scoring to ensure that a Russian skating team got the gold and a Russian judge made sure French ice dancers did too. The plan worked--both the designated teams won. But the superiority of Canadian figure skaters, who were awarded the silver medal, was so obvious that an investigation followed almost immediately and led to a confession by the French judge and her ouster, along with that of the head of the French Skating Federation. The Canadian pair was upgraded to gold.

Despite its historic reliance on tulle, sequins and the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, figure-skating is not the Olympic Catholic schoolgirl it once was. When Tonya Harding hired goons in 1994 to take a baseball bat to competitor Nancy Kerrigan, the skating world was revealed as just another stressed out, high-stakes athletic world. Still, Wednesday's arrest of the reputed Russian gangster at his resort home in Forte dei Marmi, Italy, seemed a baffling and over-the-top end to the scandal. In the much-mined literary landscape of organized crime, casinos, liquor, drugs, prostitution are the standard purviews. Art theft, OK, but figure skating? What's next, rigged bunco games?

According to gangster watchers everywhere, nothing is off-limits. Forget the family-honor imprint left by too many viewings of "Godfather II." Gangsters are criminals; they're in it for the payoff, however weird and petty.

"If you have a criminal mind, you engage in a lot of fantasies because there is no limit to how you can make money illegally," says Antonio Nicaso, author of "Global Mafia: The New World Order of Organized Crime." Besides, he adds, the guy is Russian. "The Russians have a completely different mentality. There are no rules, there are no boundaries. Nothing is off-limits," he says.

According to Nicaso, the current crop of Russian mobsters cut their teeth on the Politburo. "They're used to bribing people, it is just how they think. The government controlled everything, it used the criminals as bodyguards and allowed them to run the black market. The only people with any money when the Soviet Union fell were the criminals. And they think that money can buy anything."

Unlike older, more traditional crime families in Italy or the United States, the Russian mobsters refuse to follow the time-honored ritual of starting small, establishing territory, asking for protection money, working their way up. Instead, Nicaso says, they come into the U.S. and other countries and try to buy their way in, going straight to law enforcement officials and politicians. "In this way, they are less visible," he says. "And you have no idea what they are going to do next."

Not that organized crime is above putting the fix on sporting events. College basketball, pro football, even. If mobster-turned-evangelical Michael Franzese is to be believed, the New York Yankees have been tempted and tainted by men in hats and their dirty money over the years.

"I'm not shocked, I'm not surprised," says Jerry Capeci, former New York Daily News Gangland columnist and author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Mafia." "The mob, whether they're Italian or Russian or Jamaican, whatever, will do anything if they think they can make a buck and get away with it."

Yes, he says, figure skating seems a bit odd for gangsters. "But there have been reports of Russian gangsters trying to get involved in the National Hockey League for years," he says. "The Gambino crime family was involved in the boxing industry for years. Inevitably some guy will think he can get away with something as high profile as the Olympics." Well, hockey and boxing, yeah. Marlon Brando would sign off on both of those. Harder to imagine him sitting through a skater's interpretation of "Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong."

But then Tokhtakhounov has a bit of a rep in the hair-spray and eyeliner set--he is alleged to have rigged several Moscow beauty pageants over the years.

"The mob has always tried to control betting circles, to get an edge by bribing players, or getting information about players so they know the weaknesses," says Allan May, a crime historian who writes regularly for AmericanMafia.com. Still, he concedes, "figure skating is a little unusual. You tend to think more about rigged fights or boxing," he said. "But the Russians are different from the Italians in a lot of ways." The payoff in this case was not money so much as it was location, location, location. According to the U.S. attorney's office, Tokhtakhounov hoped to curry favor with French officials who would then renew his visa so he could return to France where he had lived for several years. "Goodfellas" meets "A Year in Provence." "Well it just goes to show you," says Capeci, "that even to gangsters some things are more valuable than money."

August 2, 2002