The murder of "Grandfather Hasan" and myths about "Tagansky"
On May 12, the Moscow City Court announced the verdict against the leaders and participants of the «Tagansky» organized criminal group, issued on the basis of the jury's verdict. They unanimously recognized as proven that no later than January 1, 1991, a criminal group called «Taganskaya» was created in Moscow, consisting mainly of strong young men with athletic achievements. «Tagansky» leader Igor Zhirnokleev was sentenced to 25 years in prison, of which he must spend the first 12 years in a prison cell. 25 years is the maximum possible sentence for those over 65, and Zhirnokleev is already 68.
Another «Tagansky» leader, Grigory Rabinovich, has been dismissed from criminal prosecution due to the defendant's death. Rabinovich died on the night of July 25, 2024, in the «Matrosskaya Tishina» prison cell. The remaining members of the gang were sentenced to harsh terms ranging from 22 to 25 years in prison, and almost half of which the convicts will spend in prisons.
Long before the verdict was passed, myths and legends began to form about the «Taganskys» under the leadership of Zhirnokleev and Rabinovich, which were more like tall tales. For example, that many members of the gang took part in the preparation of the murder of Aslan Usoyan, better known in the criminal world under the name "Grandfather Hassan".
One respected Telegram channel, and after it, some media outlets wrote that the murder of «Grandfather Hasan» was proved thanks to the testimony of an organized crime group member Yuri Malinovsky, who led the organized crime group's operational unit – wiretapping, external surveillance. According to the source, Malinovsky described in detail how the thief-in-law Aslan Usoyan was followed the day before he was shot by a sniper. This was done on the orders of «Fat», he also ordered to allocate an automatic «Val» from the group's arsenal for the operation.
He gave the «Val» and its ammunition to Levan Dzhangveladze, the brother of the thief-in-law Merab Dzhangveladze, who had long been in conflict with «Grandfather Hassan». Later, Usoyan was shot from «Val», - the end of the quote.
But this is not true. A single defendant was charged with complicity in the murder of Aslan Usoyan. And this is Igor Zhirnokleev. «Taganskiye» did not keep track of «Grandfather Hassan», because there was no need for it. Every day he moved along the same route-from the house on Tverskaya Street, where he lived, to the restaurant "Old Phaeton" on Povarskaya Street. It's only a few kilometers away. And Zhirnokleev did not give the order to transfer the «Val» assault rifle to the organizers of Usoyan's murder. He himself took the weapon from the cache and personally handed it over to Levan Dzhangveladze.
Only two people in the gang knew about the cache of weapons – Zhirnokleev and the one who was engaged in the storage of weapons. This man made a deal with the investigation. It was he who showed the place where the cache was equipped.
And the fact that Zhirnokleev personally took the weapon from the cache and personally handed it over to the organizer of the murder, FSB operatives received information from one ofthe close associates of the criminal authority Merab Dzhangveladze, whom the investigation in the criminal case of the murder of Aslan Usoyan considers the customer of the crime. I have already talked about this in the program of the «Taganskiye» organized crime group and the murder of «Grandfather Hassan», which can be viewed at the link below this video.
We will return to another myth around the «Tagansky» organized criminal group led by Zhirnokleev and Rabinovich – that the history of the gang began in the late 80s of the last century.
To this day, many people mistakenly associate the «Tagansky» gangs led by Zhirnokleev and Rabinovich with other gangs that operated in Moscow in the early 90s. These gangs were also called «Tagansky» primarily because of their location in the Taganka district and because of the sympathies of the restaurant "Zakarpatye Uzory", which worked in this area, where the leaders of all «Tagansky» gangs liked to relax after a busy gang day. But all these "Taganskys" had nothing to do with the gang, whose verdict was announced on May 12, 2025.
The most famous of the other "Tagansky" was the group of Andrey Isaev, nicknamed "Rospis". In 1992, Vyacheslav Ivankov, much better known in the criminal world by the nickname "Yaponchik", crowned Isaev a thief in law. Simultaneously with the "Rospis", Alexey Petrov, nicknamed "Petrik", received the highest status in the criminal world.
"Rospis", "Petrik" and two more thieves-in-law Pyotr Naumenko, nicknamed "Naum" and Viktor Koledov, nicknamed "Guba", and united their fighters into one gang, which was also called «Tagansky», and which received the blessing of "Yaponchik" for an uncompromising war with "lavrushniki" or " oranges".
The leaders of the so-called Slavic criminal gangs referred to gangsters who came from the Caucasus, primarily from Georgia, who mostly bought theft titles for a lot of money. They had nothing to do with the real thieves in law, but the "lavrushniki" were joined by people from Chechnya, and together they became a very formidable and powerful force.
Attacking the established criminal world of Moscow, the so-called Slavic gangs are being forced out of the territories they controlled. The gang of the criminal quartet "Rospis", "Petrik", "Naum" and "Guba" began to restore the status quo. Moscow was engulfed in a bloody showdown between the Slavs and Lavrushniki, who joined forces with gangs from Chechnya.
These gangs also did not sit idly by, but responded harshly and boldly. On July 21, 1997, "Rospis" was shot in the Polish city of Poznan. The second leader of the organized criminal group, Pyotr Naumenko, nicknamed "Naum", was taken to a pre-trial detention center in the Belarusian city of Vitebsk in 1994, where he died suddenly.
Alexey Petrov, nicknamed "Petrik", left Russia for Austria around the same time, from where he moved to France. I visited Russia occasionally. Of the four leaders of the group, which was also called "Tagansky", only the thief-in-law Viktor Koledov, nicknamed "Guba", remained in Russia, who periodically got into criminal reports until the beginning of zero. And in the noughties, he retired and died in 2019 after an illness. He was 61 years old.
The «Taganskiye» organized criminal group of Zhirnokleev-Rabinovich was formed and developed along a parallel trajectory. These «Taganskiye», in contrast to the «Taganskiye», which were led by four thieves in law, did not honor the now-banned AUE in Russia, did not throw off in the thieves community, did not "warm" the colonies and prisons. In addition, the personnel officers of these «Tagansky», recruiting new members to the gang, as a rule, cut off characters with criminal records, giving preference to athletes, primarily boxers. From the members of the gang, it was quite possible to form a full-fledged Moscow national team, which would consist of masters of sports and boxing competitions.
In the early years of the formation of these «Tagansky» Zhirnokleev was on the sidelines, and Rabinovich did not catch up at all until the mid-90s to deal with the gang's economy. In the early 90's, these «Taganskys» were led by Alexander Graber, nicknamed "Sasha Schmidt", Vyacheslav Frolovsky, nicknamed" Pyra "and Vladimir Fedin, nicknamed" Shil".
One of the founding fathers of this «Tagansky» group, "Sasha Schmidt", was already a wealthy man by 1994. He lived in the United States, where he had a residence permit, the so-called "green card". But he regularly flew to Moscow to solve urgent issues. So in June 1994, he flew to deal with the arrival of bespredelschikov from the Lazovsky gang at the «Credit-Consensus» bank, which was under the roof of the «Tagansky» organized criminal group.
The arrow was scored on June 16, 1994 in a bank that worked in the building of the Central Research Institute of Ferrous Metallurgy in Tekhnicheskiy Pereulok. The Central Office of the Investigative Committee of Russia is now located there.
«Tagansky» arrived in advance, waited for an hour and a half, but did not even have time to get out of the car. Competitors were set up too boldly, literally riddling the leaders of «Tagansky» with automatic weapons. They buried the gangsters at the Lyubertsy cemetery. However, the wife of Alexander Graber insisted that the body of her husband was buried in the United States.
Therefore, in the Lyubertsy cemetery there is only a cenotaph, a tombstone "Sasha Schmidt" with an empty grave. After the shooting of" Sasha Schmidt"," Pyra "and" Shil", Igor Zhernokleev and Sergey Skornyakov took over the reins of «Tagansky». Zhernokleev became the brain of the group, which planned crimes and distributed the gang's income among the members of the group.
Skornyakov, on the other hand, went to strelki and to educational events against businessmen who came up with the seditious idea of grumbling and refusing to pay a bribe for the roof.
Soon, the two leaders in the same gang were too crowded, and Zhernokleev organized the liquidation of Skornyakov, who was killed on March 31, 2003. And Skornyakov's body was discovered only 16 years later, in September 2019, when the arrests of gang members began, and some of them went to cooperate with the investigation.
One of the piecework workers remembered the gravedigger from the Novo-Lyuberetsky cemetery. When the police came to the gravedigger, he did not deny it, honestly admitted that he periodically received orders for unofficial burials. He also showed me the grave where another body was buried under the official coffin.
When the remains were unearthed and examined, it turned out that they were the remains of Sergei Skornyakov. What happened next is already well known. Arrests, a trial, a jury verdict – a harsh but fair verdict.
But there are still too many unanswered questions in the «Tagansky» case. For example, about who protected «Tagansky» . These people have names, surnames, titles, positions, but there are no criminal cases.
Not yet.
