the reference book I bought in Moscow, in the underpass, came in handy. Scientifically speaking, it was pertinental information, and it turned out to be very valuable.
One fine August day, the phone rang on my desk and an unfamiliar voice asked me to answer the phone. We have been waiting for this moment for a long time – the Swiss company Konechim has shown interest in purchasing fuel oil in the amount of twenty thousand tons with delivery to Ukraine. Having clarified the details with me, the manager of the foreign firm, Viktor Sergeevich, promised to send an official purchase offer in my name. This was received two hours later by the fax of the assistant Khazir Daudovich, and the president literally burst into our office with this paper. It followed from the letter of Konechim that they were ready to conclude a contract, but lowered the purchase price by one dollar per ton.
– Vladimir Ivanovich, can you write forty-six?
– Khazir Daudovich, – I answer calmly, – I will settle this question on the phone for our original forty-five.
And so it happened. The next day, our president left for Moscow to sign the contract, and Vladislav Konstantinovich went to Nizhny Novgorod to coordinate the contract with the refinery.
And it started spinning. The contract was not easy, as we supplied fuel oil to sixteen sugar factories in Ukraine under the order of Ukrzaliznytsia, the Ukrainian railway. The contacts of specialists in Kstovo were transferred to me, and now the standard work of the commercial department has started: shipments of goods, tank numbers, quality certificates, acceptance certificates, invoices… And conversations, conversations – with the refinery and Moscow. The situation turned me into a mining leader, and my colleagues into assistants: the head of the department reprinted the numbers of three hundred tanks, Sergey piled up a draft bilingual contract in Russian and English, and I finalized it under specific conditions. Sometimes Sergey first to pick up the phone and introduce himself to Viktor Sergeyevich, but he politely and invariably demanded me – he did not conduct any negotiations with other persons and did not transmit any requests. I have always had respect for this person – both as a specialist who taught me a lot, and as a real intellectual. When I had the opportunity, I stopped by his Moscow office, of course, on business.
No matter what aesthetes say, but the main thing in business is money. According to the terms of the contract, Konechim paid us part of the goods, and the rest was paid upon delivery, after specifying the actual amount of fuel oil shipped. Oleg Borisovich called me to him and asked a question – can Konechim pay earlier? He generally liked to build a situation «for himself» and sometimes forced me to be a magician. It was a good school, and I adopted this principle – «I can do the impossible.» Well, I called Viktor Sergeyevich, asked, and they paid. Upon completion of the contract, we, the trio from the Foreign Economic Department, were rewarded according to our contribution to the victory, as in the fairy tale about Masha: the author of these lines – in the bowl of Mikhail Potapych, the head of the department – in the bowl of Anastasia Petrovna, Sergei – in Mishutkin’s bowl.
Chapter seven. Tough Business
You may ask – well, where is the tough business, the mafia smacks? Standard work of an average firm. But don’t rush – I have a few trumps for you! Some of them I will post immediately, and some will be presented in the process of narration.
American criminologist economist Annilise Anderson from Stanford University is one of the leading foreign experts in the economic analysis of organized crime. Anderson formulates the following final definition:
– Mafia is a group that is characterized by profit—oriented criminal activity, the use of violence or the threat of violence, the use of a significant part of its resources to prevent its members from cooperating with the police, as well as corruption of legitimate state authorities.
I do not know the sources of the holding’s financial resources, the ways and methods of concluding profitable contracts, I do not disclose the names of foreign legal entities, the names of bank officers and their countries of deployment, with whom I personally had to communicate in the course of performing my daily duties. My functions did not include brute force techniques: shoot, punch someone in the face, give bribes, threaten – but I had no right to allow anybody to threaten me, because in this way they humiliated those who led me and questioned our independence and fearlessness. Without overestimating, I saw myself as a combat unit designed to make money legally or almost legally. For a more accurate description of the prevailing atmosphere, I must share a saying that exists in our environment:
– Who knows how, he earns money, who does not know how, he runs with a gun.
And there were undoubtedly such guys in our organization, given the fact that in those years the Holding was the largest and almost the only Chechen company in St. Petersburg that was trying to gain a foothold and expand its influence in the region. From the point of view of such a science as system analysis, in addition to the interaction of objects, there is also the resistance of the environment surrounding them, in this case – strong competition in the oil business. And it was necessary to defend and defend their interests. An additional circumstance was the national and status factor – both in the external environment and within our organization.
At the beginning of my activity, I had the opportunity to make an impression of the Chechen people by their young, well-educated and well-mannered representatives, whose parents held senior government positions in the Chechen Republic. My leaders taught me in my forties the courage of ideas, breadth of views, determination and firmness. For my part, I brought the technical competence and experience of the engineer with Voenmekh diploma, the ability to solve non-standard tasks, diligence and responsibility inherent in the military industry, the ability to establish contacts with people. Later I learned to speak the same language with both bandits and foreigners. I passed a kind of tests for professionalism and decency, and most importantly – the ability to remain silent. I had mistakes, and they didn’t pat me on the head for them, but they never humiliated my dignity as a subordinate and as a Russian by nationality. And there were many reasons for this, especially during the Chechen wars, when blood was shed, sometimes I heard emotional reproaches from people who survived this hell. However, my position has always remained unchanged – I serve, but I do not humiliate myself. I did not try to learn the Chechen language, because in this way I left communication free for their native speakers. From time to time it was necessary to defend the right to historical, not «national» truth. Any national tragedies are terrible, but I also had irrefutable arguments – my relatives survived the blockade… Later I talked with Chechens of different ages, status and beliefs, and once again I was convinced that the more ardent nationalism (not to be confused with national pride) and hatred of the Russian world in a person, the lower his intelligence, no matter how many academic degrees were indicated on his business card. On the other hand, their national characteristics and traditions have always created an undeniable advantage when uniting in the fight against an external enemy, since their fighting qualities are honed in the family since childhood, boys become men capable of standing up for themselves, and for their family, and for their kind (teip), and for their land.
Nevertheless, the difference in age and mentality still affected. There were times when I did not understand someone from the authorities, and they did not understand me. A typical example from life. The president calls to me, and there are five people in relaxed poses.
– Do you sell diesel fuel for Russian supplies. And how?
I answer that buyers are interested in the product quality passport.
– And why do you need a passport if there is GOST (Russian standard)? – someone from the audience asks rather sharply with a slight accent.
I calmly explain that GOST 305—82 «Diesel fuel» specifies ranges of values of controlled parameters – cetane number, water content, flash point and so on. The buyer is usually interested in specific quantities: sulfur, mechanical impurities