Orekhovskiye is split: the "Dispatcher's gang" is heading to court

As Izvestia found out, the investigation of the latest case related to the Orekhovskaya group, the so—called Dispatcher gang, has been completed. Its participants are charged with a series of murders and attempted murders committed on the orders of the leader, assistant to the chairman of the Union of Veterans of Afghanistan, Evgeny Sterlyadkin (Monica). Having led the gang in 1995, he launched a criminal war in Moscow. Among the victims of the organized crime group are Mikhail Postnikov, the head of one of the largest Russian computer companies, Vista, an acquaintance of Bill Gates, as well as criminal authorities Nikolai Vetoshkin (Vetokha) and Alexander Korepanov (Bespaly), who was shot at point—blank range in front of his 15-year-old son.

How it all started

The Investigative Committee has been investigating the activities of the "Dispatcher's gang" for two years and, according to Izvestia, the lawyers and the defendants in the case recently completed their review of its materials. After the prosecutor's office signs the indictment, it will be submitted to the court.

This is the first investigation into the members of the "Dispatcher's gang," although the crackdown on the Orekhovskaya brigade, which she was a member of, began back in 1999. During this time, about three dozen active members of the Orekhovskaya organized criminal group and all its leaders were sentenced to long terms or life imprisonment.

However, for a long time, law enforcement agencies had no evidence of the involvement of members of the "Dispatcher's gang" in the numerous murders that were the hallmark of the Orekhovskaya bratva or "nuts", as they were called behind their backs by competitors.

Everything changed in 2024, when the gang members started talking and the investigation got the gang structure, its composition and evidence linking the defendants to the crimes. On October 15, 2024, seven gang members were arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder. The Zamoskvoretsky court sent them to jail. The measure of restraint has not changed since then. The main defendants in the case are Evgeny Sterlyadkin (Monik), assistant to the chairman of the Union of Afghan Veterans, and Oleg Maltsev, his closest assistant. The investigation considers five more perpetrators.

The Dispatcher's Gang was formed in the south of Moscow in 1989, according to the case file, and got its name from the nickname of its first leader, Igor Abramov, a pentathlete and graduate of the Institute of Physical Education. They called him the dispatcher because he was constantly talking on the phone. By the end of the 80s, Abramov was almost thirty years old, and the backbone of his team consisted of former students of the Dispatcher, to whom he taught physical education at school. Strong, smart, and aggressive, Abramov was involved in racketeering and always preferred violent solutions to problems, and his gangsters, judging by the case file, quickly copied the leader's style. The investigation believes that although the brigade was based in the Orekhovo-Borisovo area, it was an isolated armed group and sometimes even clashed with its colleagues from the Orekhovo group.

During one of these disputes related to the control of the Tsaritsyn market, the Dispatcher was riddled with two Kalashnikov assault rifles in his fighters' favorite gathering place, Kashirskoye Cafe.

The prudent wearing of a bulletproof vest did not save the authority. His closest aide, Sergei Kroshanov (a firefighter), was killed along with the leader. This happened on February 5, 1993, after which Sergei Razin became the head of the decapitated gang, and after his death in November 1995, Evgeny Sterlyadkin (Monik).

The investigation found out that Monik, along with another person involved in the case, Oleg Maltsev, joined the "Dispatcher gang" almost at the time of its foundation, the rest of the accused joined the organized crime group later and did not pursue a criminal career. At the same time, the investigation is confident that all the defendants in the case joined the group "consciously and voluntarily", knowing perfectly well about its goals, and then "actively participated" in the attacks. The investigation specifically emphasizes that during the execution of crimes, each of the gang members "coordinated their actions" with their companions to perform common tasks, thus being "part of a single criminal encroachment."

Monik, like the previous gang leaders, involved new members in it, coordinated the purchase of weapons, maintained relations with law enforcement officers and lawyers, and paid his subordinates salaries and bonuses for committing crimes. Also, according to the case file, the leader understood that the "necessary condition" for his new job was "committing crimes" against businessmen and a criminal war with rival groups "for the redistribution of spheres of influence," which "is possible only by committing murders and other serious crimes."

There are five episodes in total. The first high-profile crime under Monik's leadership was the murder of Orekhovsky crime boss Nikolai Vetoshkin (Vetokha).

Authorities and acquaintances of Bill Gates

Monika's bandits thought that it was he who ordered Igor Abramov, and decided to take revenge — Vitokha was monitored by two "sevens" and found out that the authority often visits the elite Abitare store on Marshal Zakharov Street. Moreover, judging by the case file, the bandits were in a hurry, since at the same time Vetoshkin was in conflict with the thief-in-law Sergei Komarov (Komar), and Monik hoped that the murder would be attributed to these differences.

On November 30, 1998, after waiting for Vetoshkin, who had been convicted three times, to drive up to his favorite boutique in his Mercedes, two gang members, Volkov and Kamynin, shot him and the driver at point—blank range with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a pistol. The machine gun jammed during the shooting. This saved the driver's life: he survived his severe injuries.

The economic base of the gang, in addition to small firms, judging by the case file, was Dayana LLC and the Vist Trading Company, which the bandits took under the criminal roof.

Vista is one of the leaders of the Russian computer market in the 90s: the company controlled up to 20% of PC sales in the country, assembling them in Zelenograd from foreign components. Among the firm's partners were Samsung and Microsoft, with whose head, Bill Gates, Vista CEO Mikhail Postnikov was only vaguely familiar.

However, after the 1998 crisis, the company's sales began to decline, and it plunged into debt, which was difficult to extinguish. And in 1999, unidentified persons, dissatisfied with the distribution of profits from Vista's activities, as follows from the case, suggested Sterlyadkin to kill his CEO: Monik agreed. The direct perpetrator was Oleg Fadeev, a member of the gang, who drove up to the businessman's house on Malomoskovskaya Street on December 27, 1999, armed with an Izh-79 converted gas pistol. When the killer saw the businessman, he approached him and fired the entire clip at point—blank range - Postnikov had practically no chance of survival, he died on the spot.

Well, the "Dispatcher's gang" committed the most brutal massacre in 2004. Evgeny Sterlyadkin, as the investigation found out, learned that the well-known Orekhovsky authority Alexey Karepanov (Bespaly), who has great influence in the criminal environment, said that he did not consider Monica a serious criminal leader.

On the orders of his leader, Oleg Maltsev, using another VAZ-2107 car, set up surveillance on Bespaly and introduced him to two gang members, Alexei Lev and Mikhail Tamakhin, who allegedly needed advice from the authority. In fact, this meeting was necessary so that the bandits would know the future victim by sight, and Bespaly himself, upon seeing his killers, did not panic and did not manage to escape.

On the evening of October 8, 2004, after waiting for the authority to come out of his entrance in the house on Orekhovy Boulevard, Lev approached Bespalom and shot him four times in the head with a TT pistol. His partner's gun was jammed. The criminals were not deterred by the fact that Bespaly was walking towards them with his 15-year-old son.

The bandits committed their last murder twenty years ago, on April 28, 2006. Monik personally shot a criminal subordinate, Vladimir Kamynin, in his office on 8th Radial Street, as the investigation is sure, believing that this would strengthen his authority. The militant was invited to the office, promising to pay him a salary. After the murder, the corpse was wrapped in a sleeping bag and taken out in the trunk of a GAZ-24 car to the Kaluga region, where it was buried near the village of Chubarovo. The body has not been found yet.

Most of the accused plead not guilty, and lawyer Akhmet Geroyev, representing the interests of one of the gang members Alexander Tulupov, stressed in an interview with Izvestia that the investigation was conducted formally and biased.

Mikhail Sazanov, a lawyer and former FSB officer, believes that the investigation probably has confessions of accomplices to crimes on which it relies. This is quite enough to convict, the lawyer is sure. In his opinion, given the number of episodes, "the punishment for the defendants will be very severe."