https://www.ft.com/content/5f8f6226-2edd-11e9-ba00-0251022932c8

 

Since it is a black market, it is difficult to know how much amber is produced unofficially. But it is large enough to provide a living for the thousands of men, aged between about 16 and 45, who are now involved in it. The governor says about 2,000 dinghies go out every day if the weather permits.

 

And it’s not just the divers: there is a whole network of entrepreneurs in Kaliningrad who have at some point dealt in the black market for amber. People such as Mr Krupnyakov, the former wrestler. Along with a team of nine other former wrestlers and boxers, in 2014 he started providing “security services” for black market diggers and at one stage 240 of them paid Rbs5,000 each a month for protection from rival gangs of diggers and the police.

 

But in November 2016, he was accused of attacking a group of amber divers and demanding monthly payments of Rbs10,000 for their “services”, all of which he denies.

 

Mr Krupnyakov, who also used to be in the police and still has friends in the force, managed to evade arrest. But three of the men he was with were convicted of extortion last August, and sentenced to nearly five years in prison, as well as ordered to pay a fine of Rbs200,000 each. Mr Krupnyakov is now on a Russian wanted list.