The author of these materials, Alexander Grant, was born in 1944 in Moscow and graduated from the Department of Journalism, Moscow State University. Since 1987, he has lived in New York City and has dealt with journalistic investigations in the sphere of organised and non-organised crime.
He leads his author’s sections in Russian-language newspapers in the USA, and appears on radio and on television. He is the author of the book ‘Japonchik’s Trial’ published in Moscow. The American specialists consider him the expert on ‘the Russian mafia,’ and he believes that it does not exist, since he knows too much about it.