Marat Balagula

Marat Yakovlevich Balagula (/məˈræt ˌbɑːləˈɡuːlə/; Russian: Марат Яковлевич Балагула; 8 September 1943 – 19 December 2019) was a Russian-American organized crime figure, crime boss, and close associate of the Lucchese crime family and Colombo crime family.

Marat Balagula was born to Soviet Jewish parents in 1943 in the Russian city of Orenburg at the height of World War II. ("Balagula" is Yiddish for "wagon driver," from the Hebrew בעל עגלה.) His mother, Zinaida, had fled with the children from their home in Odesa, Ukraine after the German invasion of the USSR. At the time of his birth, Marat's father, Yakov Balagula, was on active service as a lieutenant in the Red Army.

As a young adult, Balagula obtained two advanced university degrees: one in mathematics and another in economics. For many years, Balagula also worked as a crew member of the Soviet cruise ship MS Ivan Franko, which he used as an opportunity to buy scarce Western consumer goods during his trips abroad and then sell them on the black market after returning to the USSR.

After years of allegedly running a black market food source with the collusion of corrupt Party officials in Odesa, Balagula decided to move his family to the United States in 1977. At first he worked as a textile cutter in Washington Heights for $3.50 per hour. His wife Alexandra later remembered, "It was hard for us, with no language, no money."

Balagula moved his family to Brighton Beach, where he opened a restaurant, which he later sold in order to buy a chain of fourteen gas stations. In 1980, Balagula purchased the Odesa restaurant, night club, and cabaret on Brighton Beach Avenue. The Odesa became so popular as a neighborhood locality, that film director Paul Mazursky wished to shoot a scene there with Robin Williams for the movie Moscow on the Hudson. Balagula declined the offer, as he was afraid of drawing unwanted attention to the club.

With the assistance of Leningrad-born neighborhood crime boss and former Thief in law Evsei Agron, Balagula expanded his operation while creating a series of "burn companies" to confuse the Internal Revenue Service and evade both State and Federal gasoline taxes. In time, Agron and Balagula were selling $150 million worth of fuel every month while pocketing an additional $30-$40 million in unpaid income tax. When the IRS went looking for their share, they found that all of the addresses to Agron and Balagula's fuel companies led either to telephone booths or vacant lots.

In the aftermath of Agron's murder on May 4, 1985, Balagula took over as the most powerful Russian gangster in Brooklyn. Balagula's main enforcer was Boris Nayfeld, a Belarusian Jewish gangster who had arrived in America in 1978 and who was suspected by the NYPD of involvement in Agron's murder.

According to Vladimir Kozlovsky, Balagula's wealth made him a notable figure in Brighton Beach, but whenever residents of the neighborhood were asked about his line of work, they would always say that Balagula was in the gasoline business.