The story of the theft of the Molodezhni stores, the biggest coup of the state that the USSR had

Igor Kniguin and Valeri Fineev jumped from one side to the other of the law for some time. Expolicías, rejected from the body with dishonor, decided to definitely change aside. They chose the place for their great success to the millimeter: Molodezhni department store in the west of Moscow. And a former military and a KGB agent in pre-retirement joined the group. People with experience in prosecuting crimes to commit what would be considered the biggest theft in the history of the Soviet Union until that date. A great badault that left a trace of the dead.

The plan of November 14, 1986 This did not happen as planned. The capitalist theft of Molodezhni stores was a disaster after another that led its perpetrators to the grave or prison. All with an immense secret. The opening of Perestroika had recently begun, and the Soviet authorities were obsessed with concealing an unprecedented criminal act. Not only had it been committed by former law enforcement officials, but it had also destroyed the image that they were desperately seeking to show: that criminal and mafia organizations they existed only in the bourgeois countries And in the cinema.

The Molodezhni department stores were one of the few in the Soviet capital where there was almost no problem with jeans being awarded to Americans and other style clothes, so that had become a place chic, where the fashionistas were spending their salary. This Friday, November 14 was a collection day. Shortly before 9 pm, a small van with three state bank security guards is parked in front of the mall. Two of the agents went down, collected the income and put it in the vehicle.

The group was waiting for them ready to play. Valeri Fineev, dressed in his former police uniform, approached one of the doors. Igor Kniguin, the brain of the operation and also in uniform, approached the other. Together, they ended the life of two of the agents and seriously injured the third before taking the bag with the money. In the parallel street, KGB ex-agent Konstantin Golubkov was driving his car, a blue Lada Zhiguli, ready to escape. The fourth member of the group, the former Yevgeny Subashov, had several Molotov badtails and two grenades. According to the plan, he had to launch the equipment so that the explosion facilitated their escape. But he does not have it. And everything started to collapse.

Alerted by the shooting, policewoman Vera Alfímova, destined to monitor Molodezhni's stores, who had already completed her shift, handed over her weapon and waited for the bus nearby, rushed to the van destined for the collection. Fineev and Kniguin also killed him. In the short ride with the bag to the car, a man walking his dog saw them. But neither of the two exaggerations still had ammunition. So they got into Golubkov's car and derailed. The ex-military Subachev, directly, decided to take the bus and go home.

Chaos erupted at the door of the Molodezhni stores. All the police of Moscow He was alert. Kniguin and his group managed to take more than 330,000 rubles; an amount with which one could buy, for example, 57 cars Zhiguli, the most popular car in the USSR, 250 players Vudeo – a luxury product – and 30 community departments. Or with which each of the four thieves could have lived for 55 years in the most luxurious hotel in Sochi.

The great Soviet leaders arrived at the scene of the crime. Among them, the first secretary of the city of Moscow, Boris Yeltsin, who then tried to give a small opening to the capital and who this blow could be expensive to race. The Russian press does not count a word. Ban on information for "political reasons," said Issa Kostoev, a reputed police officer, who led the investigation into the robbery and spoke over the phone The country.

Meanwhile, the car with the three thieves and loot roamed the streets of Moscow without attracting much attention and within speed limits. Until a patrol car is stopped. There was a shooting in which two officers were wounded. Also Golubkov, who could not drive anymore. Kniguin, deported, considered the KGB's exager a burden and decided to shoot him and throw him out of the vehicle. Kniguin and Fineev decided to separate. The bag containing the money, complete in addition to the bills, weighed 45 kilos. The thieves could not even drag him. So they left him hiding in the car. Fineev, still in police uniform, decided to take a taxi and go home. Kniguin, I did not want to get away from the booty too much, hidden in the boiler room of a neighboring building. There, surrounded by police and dead-end, he was shot in the back.

Issá Kostoev, who was later to solve other more complex cases such as the Rostov Butcher – who killed dozens of women and girls from 1978 to 1990 – found several dead on the table and few of them were killed. 39; indices. Until Fineev makes another mistake. When he got to his apartment, he wanted to know how his friend was doing. He called his house and spoke with Kniguin's mother. The sound of the last phone alerted the investigators, although Fineev had a good alibi. He would have been with his wife and son. His family confirmed him. "But something did not close … For other questions, we did not ask him the question.He did not recognize that he had called Kniguin's mother." explains the researcher. Pressed by the police, Fineev, 27, thought that his other two companions had confessed. He did not know that the commander of the operation had committed suicide and that the fourth member of the gang, Lieutenant Subachov, was not even on the police radar. So he sang.

With the theft of department stores, Molodezhni also discovered that it was not the first time that three of the authors were acting. Kniguin, 30, was a born leader. He had built a small criminal gang with which he had committed three murders and had committed to extort leaders of the illegal real estate sector, flourishing in Moscow at that time. Had begun when he still wore his police badge, before being fired for "abuse of power" and with his partner Fineev, who was also released from office later for violence.

Along the way, they had recruited Subachev, a lieutenant excluded from the army for "unfit to serve." For the big flight, they needed a fourth person. Kniguin therefore thought of Golubkov, a retired KGB, where he belonged to one of the elite units. In addition, the expia had a car. Of the two survivors, Fineev was sentenced to death for execution. Subachev, to spend ten years in prison. There is no official record of his whereabouts.