«PITS» FOR FOREIGNERS

In November 2016, the illegal migration channel in Northern Kazakhstan was suppressed. Criminals are involved in the criminal business - natives of Georgia and Azerbaijan, as well as employees of the Petropavlovsk branch of the railway, who were aided by the drivers of locomotive brigades.

The scheme was as follows: migrants were brought to the depot, they were handed out yellow vests, and they were given a tool in their hands and escorted to the territory of the enterprise. Walking along the tracks, pseudo-workers tapped with hammers on the wheels, posing as locals, and then they were put into the second section of the locomotive of a freight train heading to Russia.

The calculation was simple - after the train left the station, the next stop awaits it only in Omsk. If you stop on the road, there may be congestion on the tracks. And if the operatives made any mistake, they would have to pay fines for the disruption of the traffic schedule until the end of their lives.

The criminal group gathered people with a criminal past, well-versed in the border area, they were familiar with the operational-search activity, they knew how surveillance was conducted, and the wiretapping of telephones was organized. In other words, the attackers were aware of the technological capabilities that could prove and stop their activities. Therefore, they used different gathering places, often changed cars, and escaped surveillance through the yards, trying to mislead the operatives.

The game was worth the candle, because for one person they were paid 1000 dollars, for a migrant from Afghanistan they were given twice as much.

And the operatives, sometimes, lying in the snow, recorded what was happening. They had to control many different points, sometimes 12 hours without leaving their cars. But the operation was carried out carefully. We acted in cooperation with the Organized Crime Control Department of the Department of Internal Affairs of the North Kazakhstan region. The criminals were taken to the depot. The machinists did not even suspect that they had been under close supervision for six months already. And the train set off on time, the locomotive was driven by a well-prepared change of drivers.

The case became resonant, but, despite this, illegal activities to transport migrants in the region did not stop. The organizer of the next channel acted confidently and arrogantly. He knew the border area very well, was well-versed in the terrain, had numerous contacts in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Calls came to him from neighboring republics, 8-10 people came, and his assistants settled the arrivals into apartments. The group was dominated by a rigid hierarchy and iron discipline. The organized criminal group gathered the same as their head, impudent businessmen. Both the organizer and his accomplices were known around the entire perimeter of the border and far beyond the borders of the country. The Head himself grew up in the border area; he was familiar with the peculiarities of protecting the state border and was guided by the terrain.

Many foreigners who wanted to cross the border illegally turned to the organizer of the channel for help, his services cost from 800 to 1500 dollars. On the territory of Russia, he had accomplices among taxi drivers and guides.

Operatives recorded his illegal activities in conditions of maximum secrecy. However, in early June 2017, against the backdrop of a slight discord in the organized crime group, perhaps sensing something, the object with the most trusted accomplices hid in the dacha area and set up surveillance.

But the employees of the special unit «Arlan» involved in the arrest of the criminal group acted with lightning speed, no one managed to escape.

The work of a border guard does not require hype, and the border loves silence. The lion’s share of the service of «green caps» takes place in patrols, they silently follow the trail, chase the offender without a hustle and bustle, and the detention takes place without wasting words and, if possible, without firing. But the border guards have an even more inconspicuous practice - operational.

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«Salmakty» - this is how they say about a solid, self-confident person. This is the impression made by Daulet Kussayinov, an operative of the Nur-Sultan border control department. The Senior Lieutenant, talking about his work, is laconic, but behind his reticence there is the work of the border guard, the sentry of the Motherland.

We can say that Daulet was systematically preparing himself for operational work. He was engaged in wrestling and a barbell, he served urgently on the border, about which he speaks casually, «an ordinary site, on the right flank - mountains, on the left there were sands, and in the middle - the steppe.» However, behind this everyday life, sleepless nights on patrol, many kilometers of the control strip, which they went around on horseback or walked around on foot, and the detention of border violators.

 

 

No wonder they say that border guards are never former. Many people who have served urgent orders at the border return with their thoughts to the places of soldier’s service, even if these are deserted places, where in winter they make their way on tracked vehicles, and in summer there the best transport is a riding horse. But the guys keep their green cap; write to the “border guards’ forum”. So Daulet, having rested a little at home, began to collect documents for submission to the military unit 2032, stationed in Petropavlovsk.

The thorough, calm Daulet Kussayinov eventually switched to operational work. For him, now the border does not lie at the junction of two states, but in the deep rear. And he works not on the fact of a committed crime, but on anticipation, prevention of illegal actions. And although Daulet says that this work is not entirely analytical, in operational-search activities it is necessary to foresee, obtain information, collect evidence, analyze the situation at the border, and also check and double-check.

In 2014, criminal groups specializing in organizing channels for illegal migration became more active on the Kazakh-Russian section of the border. The flow of citizens of neighboring countries traveling to Russia gave the criminals a lucrative income. The conjugation of illegal migration channels with the likelihood of transferring members of international terrorist and religious-extremist organizations and other criminals hiding from punishment across the border aggravated the situation.

Against the background of the activity of illegal migration across the border, Daulet Kussayinov initiated and organized measures to develop and suppress channels for transporting migrants. Delivery schemes and wires of border violators were classic. Foreigners arriving from the Central Asian republics were accommodated in apartments or private houses, in their own language they called them «pits», and waited for export abroad.

Some of them were prosecuted in their homeland and wanted, the citizens of Afghanistan fled from their homes in order to penetrate into European countries. The location of the foreigners and the «pits» were carefully hidden, the criminals used increased secrecy measures - they often moved their wards around the city, transferring them from car to car, changed their phone numbers, tried to act only in the dark. This is how the group worked, whose criminal activity on organizing illegal migration was suppressed in November 2016.

Judging by the analysis of the situation in recent years, the desire to engage in such a business has been discouraged for a long time, and today there are no stable channels of illegal migration across the border at the site of the NSC Border Service Department in the North Kazakhstan region.