Founded | Early 1990s |
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Founding location | Ukraine |
Territory | Active in many parts of Eastern Europe, in the former Soviet Union, Western Europe, United States (mostly Brighton Beach and Miami) and Israel. |
Ethnicity | Predominantly Ukrainian Jews and Ukrainians |
Criminal activities | Racketeering, drug trafficking, entryism, extortion, loan sharking, murder, human trafficking, construction management, money laundering, robbery, bootlegging, arms trafficking, gambling, bribery, fencing, prostitution, theft, skimming, pornography and fraud |
Allies | Russian mafia Camorra 'Ndrangheta Bulgarian mafia American Mafia Armenian Power Triads Serbian mafia Romanian mafia Israeli mafia Sicilian Mafia |
The Ukrainian mafia (Ukrainian: Українська мафія) is a collective of various organized crime related elements originating in Ukraine. Such organizations are regarded as one of the most influential types of organized crime coming out of the former USSR, including also the Russian mafia, the Georgian mafia, the Chechen mafia, the Armenian mafia and the Azerbaijani mafia. Ukrainian criminal organizations are involved in a significant number of illegal activities. Although Ukrainian criminal organizations are for the most part independently operating enterprises, they are sometimes connected with Russian mafia organizations, such as the case with Semyon Mogilevich.[1]