Vyacheslav Ivankov
Russian mob boss (1940–2009)
Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov (Russian: Вячесла́в Кири́ллович Иванько́в; 2 January 1940 – 9 October 2009) was a Russian mafia boss and thief in law who was believed to have connections with Russian state intelligence organizations and their organized crime partners. He operated in both the Soviet Union and the United States. His nickname, "Yaponchik" (Япончик), translates from Russian as "Little Japanese", due to his faintly Asian facial features.
Early life
Ivankov was born in Soviet Georgia to parents of Russian ethnicity, Olga Gostasvits and Bernard Royal-Ivankov, and lived on Iosebidze Street, in the capital Tbilisi. He grew up in Moscow. Ivankov was an amateur wrestler in his youth and served his first prison time for his participation in a bar fight, in which he claimed he was defending the honor of a woman. After his release, he began to move up in the criminal world, selling goods on the black market. Later Ivankov became involved in gang activity. His gang used forged police documents to enter houses and then burglarize them. In 1974, in Butyrka prison he was "crowned" i.e.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2621889. VIAF identifies the subject as 42649849. The Library of Congress control number is n98024670. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 2009 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vyacheslav Ivankov” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.