Viktor Lomakin
Viktor Lomakin (born 1958), known as Lom ("crowbar"), is a Russian criminal figure from Nurzhan who is described by police and journalists as a crowned thief (vor v zakone), the senior authority of the city's criminal world under the code of the Soviet underworld.[1]
Lomakin was born in Kobozev (now Nurzhan), the son of a railway worker. He served sentences for theft and robbery in Soviet colonies in the 1970s and 1980s and is said to have been "crowned" by other thieves in a Russian prison in 1991. Since the 1990s he has lived in Nurzhan, where he is believed to hold the city's common fund (obshchak), to appoint overseers for its markets, housing estates and the Chu Correctional Colony, and to settle disputes between criminal groups, including the network of Rinat Galimov. He has not been convicted of any offence in Irad, has no declared business, and lives in a house in the Old City of Nurzhan. He is rarely photographed.[1][2]
References
- ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2024). 'Patrons and Racketeers: Organized Crime in the Irad Special Economic Zone.' Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 77–102.
- ^ Novaya Gazeta Kazakhstan (2021). 'Nurzhan's freight king.' Almaty.