Ded Khasan (Aslan Usoyan), the proclaimed godfather of Sochi, gained control of the city's criminal underground following the fall the Soviet Union in 1991. According to Russian crime expert Mark Galeotti, increased attempts by other criminal groups (including fellow Georgian Tariel Oniani) to break the godfather's control of the city's underground economy escalated markedly following Sochi's Olympic bid victory in 2007.
Crime wars are excruciatingly violent, and the battle for Sochi was no exception. In 2009, Oniani's men gun downed Khasan's main Olympic operative, Alik Minalyan, plunging the city and country into a series of targeted assassinations. (Minalyan was responsible for ensuring the Khasan network's control over the racketeering and development projects that bubbled up as the games approached.) A little over a year later, Oniani's men assasinated Minalyan's replacement in a café in downtown Sochi. Then in January 2013, Khasan was assassinated as he left his favorite Moscow restaurant.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/82943/...-mafia-turf-war
