Neither three plastic surgery procedures nor the change of name helped Vadim Liede to avoid justice. Liede, a 36-year old Latvian citizen and a gang leader, was recently caught by the FBI. This past Tuesday, U.S. authorities handed Liede over to the Polish police.
Liede, also know as Ruslan Hadzajew or Willy, is guilty of at least seven homicides and several brutal robberies in Poland and other European countries. Liede was escorted to Okecie Airport in the Warsaw on Tuesday morning and then taken by police chopper to Gdansk, a city in northern Poland. Immediately after landing, the helicopter was surrounded by armed policemen who transported the felon to prison.
From Mexico to the United States
An international warrant for Liede’s arrest was issued in 1999. Liede was captured in 2003 and since then has been in a Miami prison. In an attempt to escape Polish justice, Liede traveled across Europe and then to Mexico in order to cross into the United States. Liede changed his identity several times and underwent plastic surgery three times. According to Konrad Kornatowski, spokesman for the Gdansk District Prosecutor’s Office, the gang leader has been charged with participation in seven homicides.
European plague
Joel Irvin, the U.S. attaché at the American Embassy’s legal office in Poland, said that this case was yet another example of the cooperation between the FBI and Polish police “in the search and arrest of an international felon trying to escape the hands of justice.”
The investigation uncovered that between 1997 and 1999 Liede was in charge of a gang consisting of a couple dozens armed men from Russia, Latvia, Ukraine and Poland. The gang operated in several European countries including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Holland and countries of the former Soviet Union.
Brutal methods
The gang, which robbed money convoys, banks, warehouses, businesses, post offices, and currency exchange offices, has been charged with 40 robberies. The trial of 15 gang members who participated in the most serious crimes, including homicides, commenced in the fall of 2003 in the Gdansk District Court.
The leader of the gang and its members employed extremely brutal tactics in their criminal activities, including the execution of disloyal gang members. Allegedly, Liede gave an order to kill one gang member who brought only one fourth of the amount of money expected from a particular robbery. In 1998 at one of Poland’s sea resorts, a family of three from Belarus, including a 10-year-old child, was killed after a fight. The child died from a blow delivered with a gun. Another serious crime with which the gang was charged was the robbery of a postal convoy in Gdansk, Poland, in 1999, when $1 million zlotys [$285,000 US] was stolen.
A dozen countries
On September 21, 1999 the gang robbed a foreign currency exchange office in Krakow, a city in southern Poland. The owner was seriously injured an $200,000 zlotys [$57.000 US] was stolen. The leader on that job was a Jordanian citizen who had lived in Krakow and changed currency at that particular office. According to the Polish police, the investigation also established that the gang was guilty of a number of frauds committed in Holland and Germany. Cooperation among police departments in over a dozen countries made capturing of the gang members possible. Some of the gang members were captured in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Zbigniew Matwiej, a spokesperson for the public relations office at Central Police Headquarters in Warsaw, said that the capture and arrest of the gang leader was possible thanks to information that officers from the Central Investigation Department in Gdansk passed on to the FBI.
