The Neverov gang claims that Sirotenko ordered their access to the production facility barred.

In the opinion of the Neverov gang, as time went on, the lack of understanding between the city’s two largest organized criminal groups only increased. And the neutral/friendly relations gradually transformed into neutral/hostile.

One of the next factors in the emergence of the “lack of understanding” between the gangsters was the story of the split-up of a production facility located in the Komsomolsky district next to the Komsomolskaya automobile maintenance shop.

Everyone in the city knows that this shop is part of Igor Sirotenko’s sphere of influence, so to speak, as are the enterprises located in its vicinity. The production facility we want to tell you about is not an exception.

According to the Neverov gang story, a few years ago the Sirotenko gang happened to lay their hands on a gigantic shipment of watermelons. It is not billions of Russian rubles that we are talking about, but a great quantity of red fruit with juicy red flesh and striped skin. Watermelons must be stored and sold. The director of the abovementioned facility who had enjoyed Igor Sirotenko’s protection earlier volunteered to handle this. But the director did something wrong. So the gang’s watermelons peacefully rotted on the territory of his facility. The director’s pitiful tale of the poor quality of the fruit, insufficient demand and the abundance of competitors naturally failed to produce any impression on the owner of the watermelons. And he demanded money for his goods, with a threat that unless the payment was made, the director’s head would be used as a watermelon, seeing as it was also round and could be sliced.

Looking for a way out, the scared merchant asked the Neverov group leaders for help. And he did receive a certain amount from them to pay off his debt to Sirota. It was short of giving the owner of the watermelons complete satisfaction, but the merchant promised to provide the remainder of the funds on his own. Neverov certainly had not given him the money for his pretty eyes. The director was to pay back in time and in addition help the gang buy the controlling block of the facility shares, which at the moment was owned by workers.

Igor Sirotenko’s advocates are calling the entire “watermelon” saga a delusion.

He kept his promise. As a result, the Neverov gang ended up owing the controlling block of shares which they bought from the workers for a little more than 30 thousand rubles. It was properly registered with the Federal securities commission.

However, while fulfilling the promise he had given to Neverov, the director never returned the “watermelon” debt to Sirota in full. He may have felt stingy about his “personal” funds, or those may have been in short supply. As a result, Igor Sirotenko suggested that he pay with his facility, which had already been sold to Neverov.

Not surprisingly, a dispute over the fate of the facility broke out between the groups, since both teams considered their claims to the facility ownership justified. A meeting was scheduled in order to resolve the issue. The negotiations were fairly tense. The Neverov gang members argued that they owned the facility absolutely legally and that Sirota’s financial claims were groundless. They were telling him: “The money is owed to you by a specific individual, so do whatever you want with him, and leave the enterprise to us. Moreover, this individual also owes us. And the partial payment he made to you is our credit.” Sirota, on his part, demanded that either the facility be divided, or the entire loan repaid. Eventually the parties arrived at a consensus. The director repaid his debt to Sirota, while the Neverov gang retained ownership of the facility, and continued to happily use the newly acquired property until 1997. Then the facility was sold to Yugservice company because it was not profitable.

Sirota, however, was still unhappy about how the facility situation was handled. And already after the conflict was resolved, he personally ordered the driveway to the ill-fated facility closed. The thing is, the road leading to the facility passed through the territory of the Komsomolskaya automobile maintenance shop controlled, as we already said, by Sirota. So he ordered the shop security not to allow transit of “unauthorized” vehicles through their territory. Consequently the Neverov gang had to build a new access road to their acquired property.

Sirota’s loyalists, however, maintain that there was no conflict over the facility. Moreover, in a conversation with us, one of the criminal bosses of the Sirotenko gang called this version a “weird delusion.” His interpretation was as follows: some people would like to add a “historic base” to the recently emerged financial disputes and are inventing ridiculous stuff. Besides, by all appearances those are not just inventions, but a clear attempt to draw the attention of law enforcement. “See how good and law abiding we are, and how bad Sirota is.” Even though they know perfectly well that Igor Sirotenko’s commercial interests are represented in the city in a wide enough range, he is fairly well-to-do, and a shipment of rotten watermelons would never have attracted his attention. The man is busy enough and would have never gotten involved with nonsense, like setting up barriers to prevent Neverov’s vehicles from passing through. This entire story around the facility is the creation of a sick mind.