"He believed in himself too much. He got involved in assets that the bigwigs at Lubyanka didn't plan on seeing him in. He's a cunning and very cruel man; leaving someone like that behind is dangerous and impossible," a source at the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info described the reason for the arrest of Konstantin Piskarev (Kostya Bolshoi), who ultimately received a life sentence. There were no secrets about who Piskarev shot or when, especially not from the FSB. However, they needed him; he was part of their schemes. They held their parties at his restaurant, "Shield and Sword." Thanks to all this, Piskarev felt quite secure. Until he became too independent, which led to his arrest in 2016.
Today we'll tell you about two more of Piskarev's crimes. The first was the murder of former Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs officer Alexander Aleksyukhin (also known by the nickname "Nose"). He had engaged in shady dealings during his service, and after leaving the service, he became a fixer. Initially, Aleksyukhin worked in tandem with his senior colleague, Valery Khokhlov, the head of the criminal police at the Bezhitsky District Department of Internal Affairs in Bryansk. But in November 2001, Khokhlov was shot dead.
The attack on Valery Khokhlov took place late in the evening as he was returning home after walking his dog. The lieutenant colonel was killed at close range with two shots to the head from a Makarov pistol with a silencer. Khokhlov died just three days before his sentencing—he was being tried for the attempted kidnapping of a State Duma deputy's aide, a case personally overseen by then-Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov.
From there, Aleksyukhin acted as a solo fixer and outlived Khokhlov by a year. Konstantin Piskarev was having trouble with customs, which had detained a large shipment of goods. Aleksyukhin offered to solve the problem by asking for a $150,000 bribe. However, he did nothing. Piskarev and his guards traveled to the Bryansk region to "showdown" Nos, but each time he was detained by local police at Aleksyukhin's request. Eventually, Kostya Bolshoi got fed up and killed for less. Piskarev asked his friend, the "authority figure" Yuri Berezhnov (Yura Borets), for help. Berezhnov and his gangsters kidnapped Aleksyukhin from his home and took him to the border with the Moscow region, where he handed him over to Piskarev and his operatives, Zemtsov and Mishin. Kostya Bolshoi personally dragged the victim into the woods, where he retrieved his special suitcase containing torture devices. He began torturing Nos, breaking every finger on his hands. Then he strangled him. The body was buried in the forest.
The second crime was an assassination attempt on the head of the Favorit and Sand International companies, Sergei Savchenko, which Kostya also carried out personally.
Piskarev was a Jekyll and Mr. Hyde figure. While he was simply a gangster in the early and mid-1990s, by the 2000s he had become a successful businessman, with numerous companies and connections among government officials, intelligence officials, and high-ranking security officials. He even opened a restaurant, "Shield and Sword," right across from the Moscow and Moscow Region FSB building, which was once a favorite hangout for law enforcement officials. Piskarev was indeed involved in serious business, but whenever someone did something he didn't like, he killed them. His victims included officials who refused to sign necessary documents; a fixer who took money to settle a customs issue but failed to deliver; A police officer who accepted a bribe but failed to work it off; competitors; and even a construction worker who failed to complete a job on time. Despite his vast capital, Kostya Bolshoi personally handled most of the "wet jobs."
Piskarev had a friend, US citizen Michael Gissin, who, in turn, was a business partner of Yevgeny Martynov, an advisor to the Presidential Property Management Directorate. They organized a simple business. The Rossiya State Customs Committee (GTK Rossiya) of the Presidential Property Management Directorate was selling off aircraft. A participant in this business, Vladimir Kachnov, director of the GTK, and Yevgeny Martynov, arranged for one Yak-40 aircraft to be sold for next to nothing to Savchenko's company. In 2003, Savchenko agreed to have it purchased for $950,000 by Alexey Kobtsev, director of Rusagrokapital. Matynov, Kachnov, and others were to receive their shares of this money, while the rest would remain with Savchenko. But suddenly, the Yak-40 developed an engine malfunction, urgently requiring $100,000 for repairs. Gissin advised borrowing the money at interest from Piskarev. He offered $100,000, but upon learning what the money was needed for, he wanted to become not just a lender, but a full participant in the deal and also receive a share of the plane's sale. Savchenko refused, and Kostya Bolshoi began threatening him. The frightened businessman began urgently borrowing more money to pay Piskarev off and forget him, like a bad dream. But Kostya is not so easily forgotten. Exactly four days after the plane was sold, Sachenko left a restaurant in central Moscow and got into a chauffeured Mercedes. At that moment, a man in a tracksuit and mask appeared at the car. However, it was impossible to recognize him as Piskarev. It's complicated. He's enormous and two meters tall. Piskarev opened fire on Savchenko through the windshield, hitting him. Savchenko shouted to Petrov, "They're coming for me, jump out!" Petrov swerved the wheel, opened the door, and jumped out of the car. Piskarev was distracted by Petrov and fired three rounds at him. After that, Kostya Bolshoi continued firing at Savchenko, but he managed to fall to the floor and the bullets hit him in the shoulder. Piskarev ran out of ammunition and shouted, "Fuck, that wasn't enough!" Then Piskarev got into a VAZ 2109 driven by a masked driver, and they fled.
Savchenko was so intimidated that he categorically refused to reveal anything about Kostya during interrogation. He only agreed to tell the whole truth after Piskarev's arrest. Incidentally, Savchenko had screwed all his partners in the plane deal. He invested the profits into the oil business, and only fed Martynov, Kachnov and Co. with empty promises.
