Russians Arrest Alleged Mafia Boss By Accident

Detectives in Moscow yesterday confirmed they have arrested the man regarded as Russia's most notorious mafia boss, who is wanted by both the US and UK authorities for his alleged involvement in decades of international crime.

Police swooped on Semyon Mogilevich when he emerged from a business meeting at Moscow's World Trade Centre. They formally arrested him on Thursday, together with Vladimir Nekrasov, a millionaire Russian businessman.

Mogilevich's arrest appears to bring to an end one of the most colorful and picaresque criminal careers of modern times - involving money-laundering, drugs, prostitution, smuggling, uranium, stolen icons, and international banking fraud.

Yesterday Russian police said Mogilevich had been detained under one of his many aliases, Sergei Schneider. He uses 17 other names and holds passports from several different countries, they added, including Ukraine, Russia and Israel.

Russia's interior ministry told the Guardian: "We have been pursuing him for 15 years. We arrested him as Sergei Schneider in connection with tax evasion. It was only after his arrest that we realized who he was."

FBI officials claim Mogilevich - a 61-year-old Ukrainian-born Russian citizen - is a major figure in the world of the international mafia. He is wanted in the US on numerous charges including racketeering, securities and mail fraud. Photos in yesterday's Russian papers reveal him to be a thickset man in late middle age.

Russian police launched the operation in connection with an investigation into alleged tax evasion by the owners of Arbat Prestige, a chain of cosmetic stores.

Around 50 police commandos in balaclavas grabbed Mogilevich on the street along with Nekrasov, Arbat Prestige's majority owner.

According to international investigators, Mogilevich controls Russia's largest mafia syndicate. Nicknamed The Brainy Don - he has an economics degree - he joined a Moscow crime gang in the 1970s, and was jailed twice for theft and fraud.

In the 1980s Mogilevich bought properties of Russian Jews emigrating to Israel - promising to sell them and send on the funds, but the money never arrived. He lived and worked in Britain, the US and Canada. In the 1990s he transferred the base of his operations to Hungary.

There, Mogilevich was allegedly involved in prostitution and smuggling. His syndicate was also involved in trading art and antiques taken from museums and churches across the former Soviet bloc.

Much of his money was allegedly laundered via London. In 1995 the British authorities closed down his UK operation - describing him in one classified report as "one of the world's top criminals" with an estimated $100m fortune.

The FBI put him on its most wanted list in 2003. The US charges stem from an indictment in Philadelphia in which he is accused of manipulating company stock. Mogilevich denied the FBI's claims, calling them "delirious ravings".

In recent years Mogilevich appears to have lived a semi-open life in Moscow. It is not clear why Russian authorities failed to arrest him earlier. He is now in Moscow's infamous Matrosskaya Tishina prison.