Movladi Atlangeriyev

Movladi Atlangeriyev (Мовлади Атлангериев, also spelled Atlangeriev) is a reputed Chechen mafia boss and founder of the so-called Lazanskaya crime group, known by the nicknames "Lord", "Lenin" and "The Italian". He was forcibly disappeared by unknown armed men in January 2008 in Moscow.

Atlangeriyev was perhaps the best known of the alleged Chechen crime bosses of the early 1990s. He was said to have been working with Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev to organize Moscow's fragmented Chechen groups into a unified gang.

In the early 2000s Atlangeriyev reportedly cooperated with the Russian security services in their dealings with Chechen separatists. The state agency RIA Novosti wrote in 2008 that "in recent years, former Chechen criminal group leader Atlangeriyev had cooperated with Russian law enforcement authorities." According to Kommersant, Atlangeriyev "took very active part in counterterrorist activities in Chechnya" and played a crucial part in the federal seizure of the city of Gudermes at the beginning of the Second Chechen War, for which he received Order of Honour and was given a pistol, reportedly by Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) head Nikolai Patrushev himself.

In April 2007, Kommersant wrote that Atlangeriyev and his son went to London, where he reportedly received a call on his mobile phone asking him to visit the office of the exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who allegedly wanted to "discuss business matters with him"; Atlangeriev was, however, seized by Scotland Yard in front of Berezovsky's office and later deported. In July 2008 the British special services say a Russian agent was arrested during a June 2007 attempt by Russian security services to assassinate Berezovsky and subsequently deported from Britain was an ethnic Chechen man known as "Mr. A".

On January 31, 2008, Atlangeriyev was reported to be seized at gunpoint in central Moscow by two men of Caucasian appearance; no ransom demands had been received. In early February, Moscow prosecutors opened a criminal case into the kidnapping. They also said the case could be linked with the investigation into the 2006 [...] of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.