Russian crime syndicates may be under lens

Mueller’s probe into Kremlin meddling could draw attention to hired hackers

Washington, July 5: The US government has long warned that Russian organised crime posed a threat to democratic institutions, including “criminally linked oligarchs” who might collude with the Russian government to undermine business competition.

Those concerns, everpresent if not necessarily always top priorities, are front and centre once more.

An ongoing special counsel probe is drawing attention to Russian efforts to meddle in democratic processes, the type of skullduggery that in the past has relied on hired hackers and outside criminals. It’s unclear how much the investigation by former FBI director Robert Mueller will centre on the criminal underbelly of Moscow, but he’s already picked some lawyers with experience fighting organised crime. And as the team looks for any financial entanglements of Trump associates and relationships with Russian officials, its focus could land again on the intertwining of Russia’s criminal operatives and its intelligence services.

Russian organised crime has manifested itself over the decades in more conventional forms of money laundering, credit card fraud and black market sales. Justice department prosecutors have repeatedly racked up convictions for those offenses.

In recent years, though, the bond between Russian intelligence agencies and criminal networks has been especially alarming to American law enforcement officials, blending motives of espionage with more old-fashioned greed. It’s too early to know how Russian criminal networks might fit into the election meddling probe, but central to it are breaches of Democratic email accounts.