Marat Balagula

Marat Yakovlevich Balagula (Мара́т Я́ковлевич Балагула; 8 September 1943 – 19 December 2019 ) was a Russian-American organized crime figure, crime boss, and close associate of the Lucchese crime family and Colombo crime family.

Marat Balagula was born to Soviet Jewish parents in 1943 in the Russian city of Orenburg at the height of World War II.

("Balagula" is Yiddish for "wagon driver," from the Hebrew בעל עגולה.) His mother, Zinaida, had fled with the children from their home in Odesa, Ukraine after the German invasion of the USSR.

At the time of his birth, Marat's father, Yakov Balagula, was on active service as a lieutenant in the Red Army.

As a young adult, Balagula obtained two advanced university degrees - one in mathematics and the other in economics.

For many years, Balagula also worked as a crew member of the Soviet cruise ship MS Ivan Franko, which he used as an opportunity to buy scarce Western consumer goods during his trips abroad and then sell them on the black market after returning to the USSR.

After years of allegedly running a black market food source with the collusion of corrupt Party officials in Odesa, Balagula decided to move his family to the United States in 1977.

At first he worked as a textile cutter in Washington Heights for $3.50 per hour.

His wife Alexandra later remembered, "It was hard for us, with no language, no money."

Balagula moved his family to Brighton Beach, where he opened a restaurant, which he later sold in order to buy a chain of fourteen gas stations.

Balagula's main enforcer was Boris Nayfeld, a Belarusian Jewish gangster who had arrived in America in 1978 and who was suspected by the NYPD of involvement in Agron's murder.

According to Vladimir Kozlovsky, Balagula's wealth made him a legendary figure in Brighton Beach, but whenever residents of the neighborhood were asked about his line of work, they would always say that Balagula was in the gasoline business.

However, according to a former Prosecutor from Suffolk County, New York, "Everybody in Brighton Beach talked about Balagula in hushed tones. These were people who knew him from the Old Country. They were really, genuinely scared of this guy."

In 1980, Balagula purchased the Odesa restaurant, night club, and cabaret on Brighton Beach Avenue.

The Odesa became so popular as a neighborhood locality, that film director Paul Mazursky wished to shoot a scene there with Robin Williams for the movie Moscow on the Hudson.

Balagula declined the offer, as he was afraid of drawing unwanted attention to the club.

With the assistance of Leningrad-born neighborhood crime boss and former Thief in law Evsei Agron, Balagula expanded his operation while creating a series of "burn companies" to confuse the Internal Revenue Service and evade both State and Federal gasoline taxes.

In time, Agron and Balagula were selling $150 million worth of fuel every month while pocketing an additional $30-$40 million in unpaid income tax.

When the IRS went looking for their share, they found that all of the addresses to Agron and Balagula's fuel companies led either to telephone booths or vacant lots.

According to journalist Vladimir Kozlovsky, Reznikov was a former resident of Kyiv and is still believed in Brighton Beach to have been responsible for both the 1983 murder of mobbed up Soviet dissident intellectual Yuri Brokhin and the 1985 murder of neighborhood crime boss Evsei Agron.

As a means of sending a message, Reznikov drove up to Balagula's offices in Midwood, Brooklyn.

Sitting in his car, Reznikov opened fire on the office building with an AK-47 assault rifle.

One of Balagula's close associates was killed and several secretaries were wounded.

In the aftermath of Agron's murder on May 4, 1985, Balagula took over as the most powerful Russian gangster in Brooklyn.

After Colombo crime family caporegime Michael Franzese sent soldier Frankie "the Bug" Sciortino to extort protection money from Balagula's underlings in the gasoline business by threatening them with a ball peen hammer, Balagula requested a sitdown with Lucchese crime family consigliere Christopher Furnari at the 19th Hole social club in Bensonhurst.

According to former Lucchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, who was present at the meeting, Furnari declared,

"Here there's enough for everybody to be happy...to leave the table satisfied. What we must avoid is trouble between us and the other families. I propose to make a deal with the others so there's no bad blood...Meanwhile, we will send word out that from now on you and your people are with the Lucchese family. No one will bother you. If anyone does bother you, come to us and Anthony will take care of it."

In an interview with Robert I. Friedman, a Genovese crime family member recalled with a laugh, "The next time I saw Michael [Franzese] and mentioned Marat, his face went white. Christie Tick had put out the word that Marat was under his protection."

In the aftermath, New York's Five Families imposed a two cent per gallon "Family tax" on Balagula's bootlegging operation, which became their greatest moneymaker after drug trafficking.

According to author Philip Carlo, "Because Gaspipe and Russian mobster Marat Balagula hit it off so well, Casso was soon partners with Balagula on a diamond mine located in Sierra Leone. They opened a business office in Freetown."

According to Jeffrey Robinson, there was so much money coming in from the gas tax scam that it was too big for anyone to control and everyone involved was stealing money from each other.

Meanwhile, among many other things, Balagula owned a New York mansion decorated in pink marble and a private island off the African coast.

According to one former associate, "The LCN reminded Marat of the apparatchiks in the Soviet Union. He thought as long as he gave them something they would be valuable allies. Then all of a sudden he was at risk of being killed if he couldn't pay to the penny."

At the same time, Balagula's underboss, Boris Nayfeld, was asked by a member of the Gambino crime family if he could obtain heroin.

In response, Balagula and Nayfeld set up an international smuggling operation.

China White heroin was purchased in Thailand, sealed inside television sets, and then smuggled to Poland.

The drugs were then couriered to New York City and sold to the Five Families.

As Poland was not an expected source for drug trafficking into the United States, it took a very long time before the DEA and U.S. Customs became wise to the route.

Balagula also ran an arms trafficking ring that purchased automatic weapons in Florida, transported them to New York City, and them shipped them to the USSR for sale on the black market.

Balagula's deal with the Five Families was seen as a sign of weakness by his rival, a fellow Soviet Jewish gangster named Vladimir Reznikov.