Spanish authorities conducted a massive sting operation against his organization. Oniani managed to escape, though several associates and his daughter were detained.
. This conflict triggered a bloody "mob war" across Europe and Russia: The Yacht Raid:
As a chaotic, full-scale mob war loomed, Russian law enforcement intervened. In June 2009, Oniani was arrested in Moscow. In July 2010, the Khamovnichesky District Court sentenced Oniani to for organizing the 2009 kidnapping and extortion of Georgian businessman Johnny Manadze. tariel oniani prime crime top
in prison for kidnapping and extortion. During his term, he was stripped of his Russian citizenship. Recent Status April 2019
In January 2013, Usoyan was also killed by a sniper in Moscow. While other suspects like Rovshan Janiyev This conflict triggered a bloody "mob war" across
: In the 1990s, he moved to France, where he built connections with other high-ranking Eurasian mobsters.
In Spain, Oniani operated with immense sophistication, managing airline stock and a sprawling network of construction companies. However, in 2005, the Spanish police executed —a massive sting operation targeted directly at his syndicate. Though Spanish authorities arrested dozens of his associates (including his business partner Zakhar Kalashov), Taro narrowly escaped capture and fled back to Russia using false identities. The Great Post-Soviet Mafia War in prison for kidnapping and extortion
His story is a crucial chapter in the history of global organized crime, illustrating the violent transfer of power from the old guard (Usoyan) to the new era of Vory (Oniani). Although he is now incarcerated and his power base dismantled, the network he built and the model of corruptive capitalism he perfected continue to influence the criminal underworld today. Tariel Oniani's rise and fall is a testament to the fact that in the world of "prime crime," the only thing more dangerous than a war on the streets is a war on a global scale.
The war continued. The Vory brought in , the most famous thief-in-law of all, to mediate. Instead, Ivankov sided with the older Usoyan against Oniani, whom he saw as a younger upstart. In July 2009, a sniper shot and killed Ivankov as he left a Moscow restaurant, a murder widely attributed to Oniani’s faction. In January 2013, after several previous attempts, Aslan Usoyan himself was finally gunned down by a sniper in Moscow, a killing that prosecutors believe was the final act in Oniani’s war for the top spot.
But the legal battles did not end there. After years of diplomatic wrangling, Oniani was extradited from Russia to Spain in October 2019. The Spanish justice system finally got its chance to put him on trial. In a landmark ruling in 2020, Spain's National Court found Tariel Oniani guilty of criminal association. The court gave him a four-year prison sentence, definitively establishing that between 2000 and 2005, he was the maximum leader of the "Kutaiskaya" criminal organization in Spain. The legend of Tariel Oniani, the 'vor v zakone' who once ruled the European underworld, was brought to its final, legal end.