‘In Russia, if you have a problem with someone, you meet them face to face and shoot them if you have to. Here, it’s different. Here people get other people to sort their problems out…

“If you f*** with me, I look you in the eyes and say, ‘I kill you’.”

Igor Russol said these words during a media interview in January 2012.

He was detailing his background, explaining how power had shifted in Cape Town’s underworld in the run-up to, and since, his arrival in the city around 2001.

This organised crime arena is exceptionally murky and cutthroat, with claims of rogue police officers and intelligence operatives siding with gangsters and working against honest colleagues.

There are also suspicions that some in this arena are politically connected criminals who become state informants to try to indemnify themselves from prosecution, and to trip up rivals.

Alliances and assassinations

Born in Odesa, Ukraine, Russol said in 2012 he had been best friends with Yuri “the Russian” Ulianitski, who travelled to SA years before Russol and became involved in Cape Town’s notorious bouncer scene.

This placed Ulianitski in the same circles as shady individuals including rumoured intelligence operative and security outfit boss Cyril Beeka.

Ulianitski was assassinated in Cape Town in 2007. Beeka was assassinated in Cape Town in 2011.

No arrests were publicly announced for the killings. While there are several strong rumours about who pulled triggers and who gave the orders, these murders basically remain unsolved.

The year following Beeka’s killing, 2012, Russol wanted his version of events told and sat down for an interview, during which he provided his perspective on Cape Town’s underworld shifts.

‘You can’t be number one forever’

Russol claimed to have effectively replaced Ulianitski in the underworld and to have become known by Ulianitski’s nickname, “the Russian.” (Other figures linked to the underworld had referred to Russol as “the other Russian.”)

One of the things Russol said during the interview was: 

“You can’t be number one forever. You’ll be taken down.”

In the weeks following Russol’s January 2012 interview, he was arrested for extortion, theft, and intimidation.

Claims that surfaced in the ensuing case that partially played out in the Cape Town Magistrates’ Court included that he had extorted a local businessman between November 2010 and January 2011.

It had also emerged that four temporary work permits granted to Russol between 2003 and 2010 had listed his employer as Mark Lifman Properties.

Bouncer factions

Mark Lifman is a controversial figure in Cape Town who faces, and has faced, several criminal charges.

This is where the plot becomes stodgier.

Back in the 1990s, nightclub security in Cape Town was dominated by Beeka. After Beeka’s 2011 assassination, figures whose names have courted controversy and criminal claims in Cape Town became dominant in the bouncer industry.

Among them were Lifman, as well as his associates Jerome “Donkie” Booysen and Andre Naude. In 2015, Lifman and Naude were acquitted of running a bouncer company without being registered with the Private Security Regulatory Authority, as is required by law — they claimed the state targeted them for ulterior reasons.

Fast-forward to around 2017 and Nafiz Modack, who was close to Beeka, and others linked to Modack, allegedly tried to muscle out the so-called Lifman group to dominate the private security arena focused on nightclubs.

This created the impression that the nightclub security industry was divided into two broad factions — one allegedly headed by Modack and his allies, and the other by Lifman and his associates.

These power tussles were explored in-depth in the book The Enforcers – Inside Cape Town’s Deadly Nightclub Battles.

Picking a side

If Lifman had effectively been employing Russol for several years as was previously alleged in a court case, it would have put Russol on that perceived side — the Lifman and co side — of the nightclub security saga.

However, in a subsequent extortion case focused on Modack, a police detective, Charl Kinnear, testified in early 2018 about Russol’s movements.

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Kinnear had said that, according to Russol, Modack had called Russol in April 2017.

By that point — when Modack had called — Russol was back in Ukraine.

According to Kinnear, Modack asked Russol to return to SA to work for him as Modack was taking control of clubs from Lifman and co, and Modack had paid for his air ticket back and provided Russol with accommodation.

Russol, based on what Kinnear testified in court, allegedly claimed Modack was extorting “rich Jewish people in Cape Town” and wanted several individuals, including Lifman, murdered.

Switching sides (again)

If all that emerged in court was true, it effectively meant that after working for Lifman, Russol moved over to work for Lifman’s alleged rival — Modack.

But in the Modack-centred extortion case, it emerged that Russol left Modack’s employ in May 2017 and by the end of that year was working for Lifman again as the manager of a club in Cape Town’s city centre. A theory doing the rounds at the time posited that Russol may have been tasked (by those wanting to take Modack down) to work with Modack only to later make serious allegations against him.

For his part, Modack, who was acquitted in the extortion case in 2020 and who has previously claimed certain police officers are unfairly targeting him, has since been arrested on a string of other criminal charges. He is also accused in relation to the assassination of Kinnear, the police detective who previously testified against him and who was later murdered in September 2020.

The Steroid King’s murder

While nightclub security and gang ructions have played out in Cape Town over the years, certain names have repeatedly cropped up. An example is steroid dealer Brian Wainstein, known as the Steroid King.

Wainstein was murdered in his Cape Town home in August 2017. Several arrests were carried out.

In December 2020, more arrests were made in connection with the killing — Lifman, Jerome “Donkie” Booysen and William Stevens, widely known as a senior 27s gangster, were detained.

Stevens was subsequently murdered in a shooting. Andre Naude, whose name was well known in bouncer and related circles by this point, also became a suspect in the Steroid King murder case.

‘The other Russian’ resurfaces

Barely a week ago, so too did Russol. Daily Maverick reported that last week Russol was arrested and became the sixteenth accused in the case.

Like a decade earlier when he was accused of extortion, he appeared in the dock in the Cape Town Magistrates’ Court for the Wainstein matter.

Russol, released on R15,000 bail, now faces counts relating to conspiracy to commit murder, gangs, and contravention of the Firearms Control Act.

He is expected in the Western Cape High Court on Friday, 5 August 2022 with several other accused in the case, including Lifman, who Russol was said to have worked for before and after allegedly working for Modack. DM