The extraordinary past of the international criminal "Living dangerously" 2017
Imre Arakas, nicknamed The Butcher, is currently being questioned at a Dublin garda station over his connections to the Kinahan crime cartel.
On Tuesday armed gardaí stormed a house in Blakestown, West Dublin where they discovered 58-year-old Arakas and two other known associates of the Kinahan gang.
Gardaí suspect that the 58-year-old was being primed for a series of attacks on the rival Hutch gang. Yesterday Independent.ie revealed that detectives attached to the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau (DOCB) also found a list of Hutch associates and disguises.
It sounds like a plot from a Hollywood gangster movie but Independent.ie can reveal that it is just the latest chapter in a colourful criminal career that has spanned four decades and the entire continent.
We can also reveal Arakas:
Led Soviet police on an 87 day manhuntSpent 15 years in maximum security prisons behind the Iron CurtainDuring the 1990s he was a senior member of a Tallinn gang who led a bloody war against the Russian mafiaWas convicted in 2011 over a bizarre plot to fake the murder of a senior businessmanWas questioned by police after a media mogul was targeted with a Molotov cocktailAnd admitted recently that he “continues to live dangerously”
Hailing from Estonian capital Tallinn, Arakas is not your typical career criminal.
Journalist Tarmo Vahter, who has written extensively on the subject for Ekspress newspaper, said Arakas first came to the attention of authorities in 1977, aged just 18.
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The aspiring actor, who was interested in art in school, was caught painting anti-communist graffiti on a number of buildings and a police van in the capital city ahead of the November 7 Russian Revolution anniversary.
He was quite good looking and he was a boxer and an artist
He was convicted of the offence but avoided jail after one of his teachers spoke up for him in court and he was sentenced to two years in prison with conditional discharge.
Arakas later attempted to get into acting college but narrowly missed out and instead decided to flee the Soviet Union.
Along with his friend they got hold of a small boat and their plan was to travel by sea to Sweden. However the plan hit a fairly significant stumbling block when their motor failed a short distance into their journey.
“It was Soviet made, so it was always going to fail,” joked Mr Vahter.
Not put off by this initial setback Arakas decided to try again. This time he believed that if he was going to escape he would need a weapon because armed Soviet border guards were patrolling the seaside. And so he and two friends decided to rob a police sports club, which was a shooting gallery.
In the course of the robbery one of the raiders kicked an old woman who was working in the gallery at the time. Nevertheless they escaped with 13 pistols and over a thousand rounds of ammunition.
“It was a very serious and dangerous crime in the Soviet Union,” Mr Vahter said. “At the start the Soviet police had no idea who did it. It happened before a Supreme court election and investigators thought it was maybe a terrorist attack.”
Following a tip-off police tracked down Arakas and his accomplices.
However, he escaped their grasp again just days later when he fled from a court hearing through the streets of Tallinn. The court was located in Stenbock house, which is now the Estonian Prime Minister's office.
During his daring escape Arakas jumped eight metres from a hill and managed to evade the police.
The escape and subsequent 87-day manhunt elevated Arakas to cult-hero status in his native Estonia and today many people still view him as a “Robin Hood character”.
“He was quite good looking and he was a boxer and an artist. It’s very unusual because he was not a typical criminal at all,” Mr Vahter explained.
The KGB and Soviet police were afraid that Arakas may target the highest Communist party official in Estonia and his photo was published in newspapers and on television. He became well-known and recognised.
Eventually he was captured and given the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.
Because there were no maximum security jails in Estonia at the time he spent the majority of this time in Russia alongside some of the most dangerous criminals from across the massive state.
“I think that he has seen in his life a lot of things. A lot of things that ordinary people have not seen and would not want to see.
“It was a terrible time in prison in the 1990s and the 1980s. A lot of people were killed and Arakas survived. It was a very tough time and he survived. He is a survivor. I think that he has a lot of experiences.”
He went into prison in 1979 a bright-eyed boy but he came out a hardened criminal 13 years later.
In 1990 Arakas was sent from Russia, with other Estonian prisoners back to Estonia. He was in Rummu prison, where during one year 52 prisoners were killed. Not all of them were his friends, but 45 of them were personally known by Arakas.
“It was like war,” he said during an interview.
Some Estonian politicians started to call for Arakas release, because of his anti-Soviet past. One of the politicians was his former classmate Mart Laar, who has served twice as Estonian PM.
Arakas was released in the summer of 1992.
Tallinn had changed dramatically - the Berlin Wall had come down and Estonia was now an independent state.
However some of the remnants of the Soviet era remained, including its criminal gangs.
Post Times journalist Joosep Vark said Arakas quickly found himself in the middle of one of the largest gang wars in European history.
“There was a Russian mafia in Estonia but the ethnic Estonian mafia wanted to push them out. Arakas was part of the ethnic Estonian mafia, he was one of their leaders.”
Are you still living dangerously? I ask. 'Maybe a little yes,' Arakas responds.
Mr Vark said over 100 people were killed in the bloody feud and Arakas narrowly escaped death on several occasions.
In late October 1997 five bullets were shot at him but none landed. Arakas then shot the gunman three times in the back but the shooter managed to flee and was never located.
Arakas spent just a short time in prison from December 1996 to March 1997 after he was convicted of possessing illegal firearms.
At the turn of the century, with most of his gangland associates now dead or serving lengthy terms in prison, Arakas left Estonia and set up home in Marbella Spain.
But he wasn’t safe here either and in December 2001, his car was shot at.
The Estonian was hit several times but managed to flee in his vehicle. Four Estonians were charged and two of them were jailed, Mr Vark said.
Five years later Arakas was back in the headlines again when a Molotov cocktail exploded in a home connected to a well-known media business owner in Estonia.
Arakas was arrested in connection with the crime but was not tried.
However in 2011 he was again back in the familiar surroundings of Tallinn court house charged in relation to a bizarre murder plot.
The now 50-year-old gangster was accused of staging a murder attempt on a businessman in a bid to get the businessman’s partner jailed.
The unusual plan backfired when police got wind of the details and Arakas was arrested alongside the businessman.
He was convicted in December 2012 in Tallinn and was sentenced to 14 months in prison. However it was a conditional discharge and because of this he was not sent to prison.
Over the last number of years Arakas has lived in Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain and is regularly spotted at court hearings in his native Estonia.
Latest intelligence suggest that he is connected to an East European organised crime group in Spain but has connections to a number of international crime groups including the Kinahan crime cartel.
Despite his criminal background Arakas continues to court the limelight and even featured on an award-winning advertisement (below) for the Ekspress newspaper. The ad featured a picture of Arakas under the headline “There are people, with whom you are afraid to speak. We will do it for you”.
Mr Vahter has spoken to Arakas on a number of occasions and in one telling interview in 2015 he asked the gangster what he did for a living.
“I got the answer: ‘I will not tell it now.’
“He tells me, that he has enough money, to live, how he likes.
“I ask him: ‘How would you like to live?’
“He said: ‘I am very lazy.’
“’Are you still living dangerously?’ I ask.
’Maybe a little yes,’ Arakas responds.”
Online Editors
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