Secret signs deciphered: drug baron behind bars

Photo: Politsei

For a whole year, criminal policemen racked their brains. But it was worth the effort – a Tallinn market leader in synthetic heroin, Vladimir Fidkevich, will spend the next 12 years in jailhouse.

Public prosecutor Kati Miitra is visibly happy, talking about the nearly-year-long preliminary investigations, having, this week, secured a significant professional victory: rarely does it happen, in Estonian judicial practice, that a criminal will voluntarily go behind bars for over a dozen of years, by compromise procedure. But such indeed was the case with fentanyl lord Vova a.k.a. Fidkevich.

This Tuesday in Harju County Court, the rest of the gang also agreed to harsh punishments. «Compromise procedure was what they desired,» says Ms Miitra.

By the «they», Ms Miitra means members of the criminal organisation. Prior to being caught, the men believed their crafty conspiracy would exclude such an accident. Proving wrong, however.

Low price the trump card

At first glance, Vladimir Fidkevich looks like any family man, raising their only child in an apartment belonging to his parents, in a big Lasnamäe block of flats. True, he has a criminal past. In 1993 already, barely an adult, he was sentenced for seven years for murder and robbery. In 2006, another punishment followed – for handling of drugs.

And yet, in 2011, the police spotted signs of danger with Fidkevich. Little by little, they got to suspecting that the man may be among Estonia’s top three fentanyl or China White sellers.

Involved in wholesale only, Mr Fidkevich was a special case with his behaviour based purely on business logic. He attempted to grab market share from competitors and was surprisingly successful at stealing clients.

Mr Fidkevich’s trump card was low price i.e. he was able to play with fentanyl price. Meaning that the amounts moved by him had to be extraordinarily big.

As knowledge alone won’t do to convict anyone, Central Criminal Police launched, in 2011, criminal procedures regarding Mr Fidkevich.

The investigators discovered quite a puzzle – a system of mysteries to avoid being caught, invented by drug business participants, half of them with no prior criminal record.

«It was like Chinese, to begin with. Impossible for us to read,» says the Central Criminal Police proceedings department head Ago Leis.

Police was indeed able to watch the drug dealers send each other SMS-messages with unclear alphanumerical characters, but were unable to decipher these. «We had to watch their information exchange for three-four times, before we were able to start compiling any kinds of behaviour patterns,» says Mr Leis.

About half a year later, the investigators thought they had the puzzle put together, more or less. It was clear the fentanyl was being acquired by Fidkevich. From where on, they were only able to guess. Probably, they thought, Fidkevich had a boss who controlled the orders and supply of fentanyl, produced in some lab somewhere. With that person, Mr Fidkevich alone communicated.

The fentanyl, gotten from the lab one or two kilos a time, was passed from Mr Fidkevich to Sergei Sinotov, his right hand man – the man who collected the money acquired by drug sales and paid «wages» to two members of their criminal organisation. Whenever clients of the fentanyl wholesalers wanted the stuff, all they had to do was let Mr Sinotov know by an SMS.

The fentanyl was hidden at three locations, near Maardu. Code names being «park», «booths» or «pipes». Buyers knew the hiding places and were able, as prompted by Sinotov, to go get the stuff.

The minimum 50 g packages were taken to hiding places by Aleksandr Melnitšuk, for whom an apartment was rented at Veeru St, Maardu, for €300. In the apartment, fentanyl was kept hidden away under the bathtub.

Mr Melnitšuk, in his turn, got the goods from Sergey Mokrinchuk – the fourth member of the organisation. As the business was in process, the gang-leader Fidkevich avoided communicating with the last link in the chain – Mr Melnitšuk – just to be sure.

Shashlikmaker’s moves

Mr Fidkevich got the three men acquainted at the beginning of February, 2012, at the Lasnamäe Idakeskus shopping centre parking lot, purchasing Mr Mokrinchuk and Mr Melnitšuk mobile phones, so these could keep contact. And, after giving the participants instructions, Mr Fidkevich disappeared from orbit.

To avoid the drugs coming into random hands, Mr Mokrinchuk introduced the clients coming to get the drugs from hiding places, by face. Thereafter, business begun.

The amounts were big. Within three months, Mr Melnitšuk took fentanyl to hideouts 25 times, about 3-4 kilograms all in all. After every successful deal, a white envelope was stuck into Mr Melnitšuk’s parents post-box with €50, the next morning.

On April 25^th last year, the police decided it was time to come into the open. On that day, the gang was organising another fentanyl sale and had Mr Melnitšuk take five packages of it to the hideout called «pipes». As the bulk buyers were leaving with the fentanyl, police lay hold of them.

243 grams were seized from the car. From the rented flat, 149 more grams were discovered. A paper was found in Mr Melnitšuk’s car, with info on all his transactions.

«For us, it was a very important thing,» says Ms Miitra, the public prosecutor. The large amount of fentanyl seized was reason enough to be satisfied. However, the cake still lacked the icing… as it was decided by the investigators not to touch Mr Fidkevich, for the time being.

They could not have even guessed, back then, that three months later the men would offer them an even larger load of fentanyl. Yet so it happened.

June 30^th, last year – the day the world famed Red Hot Chili Peppers got ready to play the Tallinn Song Festival Square – another drug deal unfolded before the policemen’s eyes.

This time, Mr Fidkevich’s hired salesman was the popular Azerbaijani restaurant Kišmišš shashlik maker Mušvig Agajev. As Mr Agajev was in all readiness to cater to concert goers at the Song Festival Square, at his shashlik stove, a former prison buddy of Mr Fidkevich’s approached him, telling him he wanted a 100 g of fentanyl for €9,000. At once.

As the fentanyl was kept at the restaurant, in Pallasti St, Lasnamäe, they drove there. Deal done, the client took the cook back to the Song Festival Square and left. Straight into the handcuffs stretched out by police, waiting for him.

During the search that followed, about a kilogram of fentanyl was seized by police in a garage in Laagri. By this, ample evidence was secured to arrest Mr Fidkevich as well. Even if, officially, he could be linked to sales of about 1.5 kg of fentanyl with wholesale value of €223,000, the actual amounts are probably much larger.

Desiring quicker release

The sizable criminal case comes in 14 volumes. «They really gave themselves to investigate this, with all of their hearts,» says Ms Miitra, the prosecutor. In the autumn, it still looked like they had a hot court dispute on their hands, with eight suspects with their differing standpoints.

Several of them said a thing or two, even Mr Fidkevich the leader; however, the process looked like a long one. And yet, the theoretically weighty punishments forced them to seek compromises.

The 20 year jail term, for creating a criminal organisation and drug business, looked quite realistic.

So, when Mr Fidkevich, client of the Bar Association’s «crown jewel» Aivar Pilv, got over 12 years at Tuesday’s compromise procedure, some think he may have breathed a sigh of relief. Could’ve been worse.

Lengthy jail terms were also the lot of other participants. €60,000 and three vehicles were confiscated into state revenues: two Land Rover Freelanders linked to Mr Fidkevich and a 3 Series BMW.

Top doers of the organisation

•    Vladimir Fidkevich (36). Leader of criminal organisation, acquirer of fentanyl. Punishment: 12 years and three months of imprisonment.

•    Sergei Sinotov (31). Tasked with meeting clients and receiving orders; storing, weighing and packaging fentanyl; passing it to Sergey Mokrinchuk; collecting money received from drug sales, giving it to Mr Fidkevich; and paying «wages» to Mr Mokrinchuk and Aleksandr Melnitšuk. Punishment: eight years of imprisonment.

•    Sergey Mokrinchuk (40). Tasked with weighing fentanyl, packaging it in smaller packages; passing it to Mr Melnitšuk and mediating it to clients. Punishment: nearly ten years of imprisonment.

•    Aleksandr Melnitšuk (27). Tasked with taking the fentanyl to storage place in Veeru St apartment, Maardu; upon orders to take the substance to agreed locations or directly to the persons. Punishment: six years of imprisonment. 

Source: PM