Marat Balagula

After Colombo crime family caporegime Michael Franzese sent soldier Frankie "the Bug" Sciortino to extort protection money from Balagula's underlings in the gasoline business by threatening them with a ball peen hammer, Balagula requested a sitdown with Lucchese crime family consigliere Christopher Furnari at the 19th Hole social club in Bensonhurst. According to former Lucchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, who was present at the meeting, Furnari declared,

Although the FBI pressured him to become a cooperating witness, Balagula refused, and continued giving orders to his organization while incarcerated in Federal prison. Balagula served his sentence, and was released from imprisonment in 2004.

In November 1992, Balagula was convicted at a separate trial for gasoline bootlegging and sentenced to an additional ten years in federal prison. While passing sentence, Judge Leonard Wexler declared, "This was supposed to be a haven for you. It turned out to be a hell for us."

After three years as a fugitive, on February 27, 1989, Balagula was recognized from an Interpol Red Notice by an agent of the Federal Border Guard and arrested at the airport in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. After being arrested, Balagula said, "It's very difficult to be a fugitive. I can't see my family. In the last year I started to work in the open. I wanted to get caught." In December 1989, Balagula was extradited to the United States and sentenced to eight years in prison for credit card fraud.

In February 1987, U.S. Secret Service Agent Harold Bibb traced the credit card receipts of Balagula's mistress, Natalia Shevchenko, to an apartment in Johannesburg. Bibb also learned that Shevchenko's daughter had enrolled in a local university and that Balagula's underlings in New York City were sending Balagula's driver, a former Soviet Navy officer, to South Africa every month to hand-deliver $50,000 to Balagula in a worn black leather bag.

Then, on June 12, 1986, Reznikov entered the Odessa nightclub in Brighton Beach. Reznikov pushed a 9mm Beretta into Balagula's skull and demanded $600,000 as the price of not pulling the trigger. He also demanded a percentage of everything Balagula was involved in. Even though Balagula immediately agreed, Reznikov allegedly threatened to kill Balagula and his whole family if the latter ever crossed him. Shortly after Reznikov left, Balagula first called Anthony Casso and then suffered a massive heart attack. He insisted, however on being treated at his home, where he felt it would be harder for Reznikov to harm him and his family. When Anthony Casso arrived, he listened to Balagula's story and seethed with fury. Casso later told his biographer Philip Carlo that, to his mind, Reznikov had just spat in the face of the entire Cosa Nostra. Casso responded, "Send word to Vladimir that you have his money, that he should come to the club tomorrow. We'll take care of the rest." Balagula responded, "You're sure? This is an animal. It was him that used a machine gun in the office." Casso responded, "Don't concern yourself. I promise we'll take care of him ... Okay?" Casso then asked, "What kind of car does he drive? Do you have a picture of him?"

In 1986, Balagula was masterminding a $750,000 credit card scam when a business associate, Robert Fasano, began wearing a wire on him for the U.S. Secret Service. After being convicted on federal charges and after an outraged Alan Dershowitz refused Balagula's demand to bribe the appeals judge, Balagula fled to Antwerp with his longtime mistress Natalia Shevchenko. Balagula then moved to Sierra Leone with mobbed up Israeli businessman and KGB spy Shabtai Kalmanovich. In Freetown, Balagula and Kalmanovich ran a very profitable scheme importing gasoline; in a deal brokered by fugitive businessman Marc Rich and financed by the Lucchese family. Balagula and Kalmanovich then moved to South Africa under Apartheid, where they arranged other deals. In later years, however, Balagula's criminal associates would say that they lost money on every deal they did with Kalmanovich. According to Vladimir Kozlovsky, in his later years, Balagula never had anything nice to say about Kalmanovich either.

In the aftermath of Agron's murder on May 4, 1985, Balagula took over as the most powerful Russian gangster in Brooklyn. Balagula's main enforcer was Boris Nayfeld, a Belarusian Jewish gangster who had arrived in America in 1978 and who was suspected by the NYPD of involvement in Agron's murder.

Balagula's deal with the Five Families was seen as a sign of weakness by his rival, a fellow Soviet Jewish gangster named Vladimir Reznikov. According to journalist Vladimir Kozlovsky, Reznikov was a former resident of Kiev and is still believed in Brighton Beach to have been responsible for both the 1983 murder of mobbed up Soviet dissident intellectual Yuri Brokhin and the 1985 murder of neighborhood crime boss Evsei Agron.

Balagula moved his family to Brighton Beach, where he opened a restaurant, which he later sold in order to buy a chain of fourteen gas stations. In 1980, Balagula purchased the Odessa restaurant, night club, and cabaret on Brighton Beach Avenue. The Odessa became so popular as a neighborhood mecca, that film director Paul Mazursky wished to shoot a scene there with Robin Williams for the movie Moscow on the Hudson. Balagula declined the offer, as he was afraid of drawing unwanted attention to the club.

After years of allegedly running a black market food source with the collusion of corrupt Party officials in Odessa, Balagula decided to move his family to the United States in 1977. At first he worked as a textile cutter in Washington Heights for $3.50 per hour. His wife Alexandra later remembered, "It was hard for us, with no language, no money."

Balagula met his future wife Alexandra at a wedding party in 1965 and married her the following year. As Alexandra disliked her husband's long absences, Balagula left his position aboard the Ivan Franko and instead began running a black market food source with the collusion of corrupt Apparatchiks, one of whom, according to Balagula, was future Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

Marat Yakovlevich Balagula (Russian: Мара́т Я́ковлевич Балагула; 8 September 1943 – 19 December 2019) was a Jewish-American organized crime figure, crime boss, and close associate of the Lucchese crime family and Colombo crime family.

Marat Balagula was born to Soviet Jewish parents in 1943 in the Russian city of Orenburg at the height of World War II. His mother, Zinaida, had fled with the children from their home in Odessa after the German invasion of Russia. At the time of his birth, Marat's father, Jakov Balagula, was on active service as a lieutenant in the Red Army.