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Suddenly Prigozhin’s Catering Company Is ‘Corrupt’
Putin goes after the money of one of his own and the oligarchs are watching
The times were good for the two pals but good times do end. Prigozhin, a self-made millionaire thanks to a popular hotdog stand that quickly turned into one of the best restaurants in 1990s Russia, and Putin, the thieving leech on the Russian body whose thirst for blood has turned the country into a malnourished shadow of what it could have been, are no longer dividing up the nation’s booty like old chums.
Prigozhin could never have become so successful without being friends with the mafia, who oversaw much of the new business activities of Russia in the 1990s. Prigozhin could not have become successful without paying the police and politicians like Putin — the mafia that replaced the “bandits” of the 1990s. Once, a captain from a mafia structure who protected our ice cream business in St. Petersburg gave me a lesson about mafia mentality.
“If your boss kills people in opposing structures in the most brutal ways, it makes you proud because he is rewarding all of us. The moment that boss acts unpredictably against any of his own, then you have to ask: could this happen to me? And that’s the greatest concern of anyone in the mafia — self. It’s all about protecting oneself.”
