They die for metal: who shot the collectors of scrap iron
A criminal case on the murder of four local residents in 2008 has been sent to court in Sakhalin. This crime was solved last year thanks to new forensic techniques. Detectives have established a motive for the crime — the redistribution of spheres of influence in the black metal shadow market. The details of the murder and a look at the modern shadow scrap trade in the Far East are in the Izvestia article.
The Chronicle
In the spring of 2008, a group of men drove a truck into the forest area behind the village of Zhdydaevo to collect scrap metal on an abandoned railway line and went missing. After the search failed, the relatives contacted the law enforcement agencies. During the initial investigative actions, an overturned truck was found nearby, and two missing bodies with gunshot wounds were found a kilometer away. The investigative department has opened a murder investigation. The fate of two more men remained unknown for many years.
UK criminologists conducted repeated inspections of the area using geolocation systems, metal detectors, echo sounders and unmanned aircraft. All the previously interrogated persons were re-examined, and the circle of scrap metal buyers operating at that time was also established. Detectives managed to find a witness who was nearby at the time of the murder. Earlier, the man refused to contact the investigation because of fears for his life.
"As a result of painstaking work, citizens with information about the circumstances of the victims' disappearance were identified and interviewed. The key testimony was given by a witness who in 2008, under threat of using weapons, was forced by a third party to participate in hiding the bodies of the dead," the Interior Ministry Media portal reported.
The testimony made it possible to identify the perpetrator and discover the graves of two more victims. All the victims received fatal wounds to the head from a hunting rifle.
According to investigators, the motive was personal hostility that arose on the basis of the division of the territory for metal collection. During the conflict, the attacker took a weapon from his car and shot the opponents, after which he moved the vehicle and the remains of the bodies to hide their tracks.
The suspect was 25 years old at the time of the crime, he had no problems with the law. He is currently on the federal and international wanted list; the issue of applying the statute of limitations for this particularly serious crime will be decided by the court.
Trial in absentia
Lawyer Ekaterina Krasnova notes that the murder of two or more persons (paragraph "a" of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code) is classified as particularly serious crimes with the strictest sanctions in the Criminal Code.
— In general, according to paragraph "a" of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, penalties range from 8 to 20 years in prison, as well as life imprisonment and, formally, the death penalty. In practice, with such compositions, the courts usually impose long real terms," Krasnova explains.
The expert draws attention to the fact that the crime was committed 18 years ago, whereas the general statute of limitations for particularly serious crimes is usually 15 years. However, there is a special rule for such murders.
— If life imprisonment is possible for a crime, the court has the right not to apply the statute of limitations. In this case, a person can still be convicted, but a life sentence and the death penalty are no longer imposed," the lawyer notes.
According to her, the final decision on the application of the statute of limitations is made by the court, taking into account the severity of the crime, the number of victims and the behavior of the accused, including years of evasion. Separately, Krasnova points to the international wanted list and the indictment in absentia.
"An international wanted list usually means that when crossing borders, a person can be detained at the request of Russia, and the issue of extradition is already being resolved by the competent authorities of a foreign state," she says.
The lawyer adds that the relatives of the victims have the right to demand compensation for material damage and moral damage, and only the court can make final conclusions about guilt and the measure of punishment.
The Nightmare of the villains of the 1990s
One of the priority areas of the UK's work remains the work on cases that were suspended years and even decades ago. The basis for the resumption of production is a painstaking revision of archival materials, a search for previously overlooked details and a comparison of data on similar episodes.
The development of criminalistics methods helps the work. Previously, biological traces only allowed us to determine the blood type, but modern molecular genetic studies make it possible to identify an accurate DNA profile. The resulting genotype is checked against federal databases, which makes it possible to find a match decades later. The storage conditions of old evidence are of critical importance: biological samples should be stored in paper packaging in a dry, dark place.
In addition to DNA analysis, criminologists are actively using digital data collection and analysis systems, geolocation equipment and forensic light sources to identify invisible traces. The work is carried out in close interdepartmental cooperation with the operational services of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and the Main Directorate of the Federal Penitentiary Service, for which specialized analytical groups are being created.
Things of bygone days
In the practice of Sakhalin investigators, there are other examples of solving serious crimes of the past years. In particular, it was possible to prove the suspect's involvement in the 1995 double murder committed in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Initially, the incident was considered as a criminal showdown between members of gang groups. However, a detailed analysis of the archive data and additional interrogations allowed us to track down a man who acted out of revenge for a relative. The suspect, who had been living undocumented and without a criminal record for 27 years, was detained in a neighboring region.
Perhaps the most high-profile trial in the Chermet case was the criminal case against the former governor of the Khabarovsk Territory. Sergey Furgal, before entering politics, was an entrepreneur with assets throughout the Far East. His enterprises specialized, among other things, in the purchase and processing of scrap metal. On July 9, 2020, he was detained in Khabarovsk by officers of the Investigative Committee and the FSB, transferred to Moscow and placed in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center, and in the same month he was dismissed from office by presidential decree "due to loss of trust." He was charged with organizing murders and attempted assassinations of competing entrepreneurs in 2004-2005. Among the key episodes are the attempted murder of Alexander Smolsky with a grenade, the murder of Evgeny Zori, who was shot at the entrance, and the murder of Oleg Bulatov— a former policeman who worked for Furgal. The investigation into these events was resumed in 2019 after receiving testimony from Nikolai Mistryukov's business partner and Vladimir Pershin, an ex-employee of the criminal investigation department. In February 2023, the jury found Furgal guilty, and the court sentenced him to 22 years in a high-security penal colony.
However, the criminal prosecution did not end there: in October 2021, a second case was opened against him, this time an economic one, about organizing a criminal community and embezzling funds from SME Bank and assets of the Amurstal plant through controlled companies with a loss of 3.8 billion rubles. On December 3, 2025, the Babushkinsky Court of Moscow sentenced Furgal to 23 years in the second case, and taking into account the previous term, the total sentence was 25 years in a high-security penal colony, in addition, the court banned him from holding public office. In addition to the criminal terms, according to the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office, more than 8.5 billion rubles of illegal income received from controlling the scrap metal market when he was a civil servant were recovered from the former governor and his affiliated companies. The ex-governor himself pleads not guilty, calling the cases politically motivated and ordered, and his lawyers have already announced their intention to appeal the latest verdict.
Current issues
The Far Eastern ferrous metals turnover market remains one of the most criminogenic zones in the Russian logistics chain, Valentin Stanovov, a criminologist and former organized crime operative, told Izvestia. Open data from law enforcement and supervisory authorities shows a steady trend: criminal schemes have shifted from targeted thefts to industrial smuggling of strategic alloys and raiding of scrap streams.
"The headache of the region's economy remains smuggling under the guise of recyclables," says a retired police colonel. — In fact, dual-use goods are exported abroad.
So, in 2026, Far Eastern customs officers stopped an attempt to smuggle 106 tons of nuclear submarine scrap, designed as ordinary scrap metal for shipment to China. In 2024, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case on the smuggling of 75 thousand tons of black scrap to the Republic of Korea and Taiwan — the damage from the underestimation of customs value exceeded 800 million rubles. And in early 2026, a court in Ussuriysk sentenced the director of a commercial company that exported more than 500 tons of aluminum alloy worth 102 million rubles to Asia under the guise of cheap semi-finished products.
Where do tons of chermet come from in the Far East?
— This is not always an echo of the Soviet era, the "runaways" (the lowest level of criminal business in Chermet) ruin quite effective enterprises, — says Stanovov. — We are talking about banal theft in the workplace. Isolated cases are included in news reports. Hard workers habitually "pull" for themselves what is not nailed to the floor, and this phenomenon is common.
In July 2025, two employees of the plant in the village of Wrangel (Primorye) were caught stealing 250 kg of scrap — the amount of damage amounted to 200 thousand rubles. In October of the same year, three crew members of a fishing vessel in Vladivostok organized the export of metal spare parts worth 60 thousand rubles. Such episodes, according to the Interior Ministry, are more of a domestic nature and are revealed within a few days. But most of these crimes remain latent.
A figure from the past
When talking about the situation with the criminal business on Chermet, experts invariably recall the thief in law Evgeny Vasin, known in criminal circles as Jem (died in 2001). Vasin's peak activity occurred in the late 1980s and 1990s, when he created the Obshchak organized criminal group in Komsomolsk-on—Amur and, according to operational data, tried to control the financial flows of local industrial giants, including the aircraft factory. In the same years, the so—called Djem Island, a training ground for the militant group, operated at the base in the suburbs. In the 2000s, Vasin moved away from strict thieving prohibitions and engaged in commerce, and his death from cirrhosis in a pre-trial detention center actually put an end to the history of his influence on the heavy industry of the region.
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