Scam call centers: part 1
Return of Ralph from Harare. The Azov crime family.
This story is a good one. At its center is a quintessentially Ukrainian institution - the call-center. Last week, an incredible scandal erupted in the scammer capital of Ukraine (it isn’t Kyiv), which involved an infamous roided and botoxed former (or not so former) member of Zelensky’s party, his private paramilitary, a patriotic member of the Kraken Regiment (Azov affiliate), and control over scam call center incomes.
But first, an introduction to the work of Ukrainian scam call centers.
Lucrative investments…
I knew plenty of people who worked at call centers. Ralph, my Zimbabwean friend in Kyiv I wrote about here, worked at one. It was a big step up from the concrete factory he was at before - one of the last straws for him there was when the boss took aside him and his African co-workers and gave them an ‘HIV test’ unprompted.
What happens at a call center? Ralph made good money there, and his craft was mainly aimed at older people in the first world - Canada, Australia, the USA. The covid quarantine was still in full force at the time (not in Ukraine), and rich westerners were bored. They’d see an ad on youtube telling them they could make big money investing in stocks. They click the ad, and enter in their email and phone number.
Big mistake! Then they’d get Ralph and his colleagues calling them every single day for the next days, weeks, months, however long it’d take to convince them to ‘invest’ $50 USD. It wouldn’t matter if they changed their phone numbers - Ralph’s company would find their new one. Sometimes they’d be reduced to tears, and agree to make the ‘investment’ just so that they’d stop calling. At that point, of course, it was time to propose a larger investment…
The company was registered in France and made calls with French numbers, but occupied several floors in Ukraine’s capital (which isn’t the criminal capital - more on that soon). One floor had Africans and Indians with good English, for English-speaking countries. There was also a floor with French-speaking Africans. This stuff is big business.
Ralph told me he sometimes felt a bit guilty, but I told him not to worry and get that bag, those western parasites and their pension managers make billions off exploiting the third world. He managed to make some good money and send some back to his mother and son in Harare.
Big bets
My girlfriend also worked in a call-center, though of a different type. It’s not very easy to find work in Ukraine. She had good university qualifications, but anything actually in her field requires depths of cynicism, nepotism and personal financial capacity she didn’t have. So she applied to restaurants and such, but here’s the catch - upon entering the interview, it turns out it also involves ‘catering’, and that catering involves ‘escorting’, and then the question appears - ‘so what are you willing to do with our customers?’.
For this reason, working at a call center was a lesser evil. She worked at one of Ukraine’s largest online betting companies - another Ukraine classic, though like call centres, it’s also just an eastern europe classic. All my high schools students from that age of 12 upwards were obsessed with betting in class on their phones, and the same for adults. Online betting has also become a a catastrophe at the frontlines among soldiers, such that even western media writes about it. It’s a huge business, with the ads everywhere, majestic, golden, scantily clad women holding up ‘Favbet’ and so on.
She had 12 hour shifts where she’d be subjected to various forms of abuse by unhinged village grandfathers demanding they receive their USD $0.04 bonuses because they’d gambled away all their money. One time, she got a call from a man in the Russian-controlled Kherson who wished cancer of the throat and a missile attack on their call center because he’d lost all his money betting.
More interestingly, the betting world is also used for money laundering. These online betting companies are essentially unregistered banks. Huge amounts of money go through them, and users open up ‘accounts’ on them to store money. Sometimes, people do so not even to bet, but just as an alternative banking system.
Enter AZOV
In the next post, I’ll be looking at the link between Azov, state security services and scammer call centers. But for now, some background on the criminal experience of the Azov Battalion.
Arsen Avakov, also called ‘Devil’, the quintessential ‘deep-state’ figure who ruled the ministry of internal affairs from 2014-2021, was famous for his shadowy role in the Euromaidan (and the sniper deaths), as well as for creating the infamous neo-nazi Azov Batallion.
Azov was formed in the fiery days of Euromaidan and anti-maidan in Kharkov, with the core being nationalists like Andrii Biletsky that had worked for years as Avakov’s muscle in his conflicts with other oligarchs in the city. On that topic, I recommend Michael Colborne’s book From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement’.
Throughout the post-maidan period, you could make a good argument for Avakov as being among the, if not the most powerful man in the country. It was he who was at the top of the vast pyramid of rightwing paramilitaries, all of whom up to their neck in blood and criminal activities. Sometimes he’d arrest or kill some out of line - like the case with the infamous Tornado batallion or Sashko Bily - because they tried to run an independent shop, they weren’t paying their dues.
In 2014, Avakov declared he’d close all Ukraine’s illegal casinos. That didn’t happen, but he did close plenty. Rumors abounded that Avakov was running the ‘roof’ - the ever-popular term for running a racket - pay protection, or else. This was even confirmed by the Zelensky government in 2019, with Arakhamiya, the head of Zelensky’s party, claiming that Avakov was ‘involved in a great deal of corruption, including the illegal gambling business, which we will legalize’.
Right after Avakov resigned in 2021, it seemed like the Zelensky government was making headway against his criminal-nazi empire. Or, more likely, making headway in convincing them to accept their new ‘roof’, and punishing those that disagreed.
In August of that year, there was a mass arrest of Azovites in Kharkiv, the homeplace of Azov and Avakov. They were all members of National Corps, the political party formed out of Azovites and led by Andrii Biletsky, the man who famously promised in 2010 to ‘lead the white races of the world in a final crusade...against Semite-led Untermenschen"‘
Strana.ua’s sources in the SBU said that until Avakov’s departure, the group enjoyed legal immunity. Apart from protection, they also often cooperated with active members of the police in their violent activities. When the SBU arrested the criminal group, led by the so-called ‘Chilly Willy’ - Sergei Velichko, a leader of National Corps and a former member of ‘Harkiv Hooligans’ - they declared that the group involved 50 members and made 1 million hryvnia a month.
The criminal group violently extorted businesses, particularly in the funeral sector (another popular activity for criminals in the wild 90s). In one of the tapes released by the SBU, one of the Azovites involved threatened a businessman that he would ‘personally bury him’ if he doesn’t pay the racket.
The dialogues are filled with swearing and criminal jargon directed at the extorted businessmen, itself an indication of the sort of Pure White Warriors who fill the ranks of Azov:
I’m tired of waiting here, we’ll find you you faggot at another address and make you sit on a bottle. We’ll find you, I’m telling you Vasya
Because it isn’t really a rightwing Ukrainian dialogue without threats to anally violate someone with a bottle!
Don’t let me ever see you here again, you understand?! Why the fuck are you looking, animal. Well that’s all, you’ve fucked up, that’s not yours anymore, fucking nothing. Should we beat you right now? You think we don’t know what you drive, where you drive, your routes? What are you, immortal?…. You’ll get fuck all. If I see you again…. I’ll bury you tomorrow. Think about your family, about your health. We won’t let you work. Valera, we are the ones who make the rules in this city, you’ll get fucking nothing, you fucking understand?
As usual, though the court showed that the Kharkiv Azovites had been engaged in racketeering since at least 2018, the leader was given 2 months of jail time.
Azov and its affiliates were also implicated in a wide range of criminal activities. They often conduct ‘protests against illegal construction’, which in reality are paid off by various construction companies to halt the work of their competitors. And I translated a long article about the hyper-lucrative business of smuggling goods across the border.
Smuggling, and related activities like racket of civilians through torture and sexual violence was what the infamous Tornado Batallion was done for, but in reality all the rightwing batallions did that, as documented by Human Rights Watch.
That’s all for now. I’ll leave you with a photograph of this intriguing man. To find out who he is, stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment in the call center series: THE OFFICE
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