MOSCOW, August 24 (RIA Novosti) - Begging in Moscow's subway appears to be a well-run business with a hierarchy and average monthly incomes of around $1,300, similar to a Metro driver's salary, according to a Russian TV report.
Olga, a beggars' ringleader in the Russian capital's Metro, who police caught after finding her phone number on several detainees' cell phones, shed light on some of the business's secrets in an interview with the Vesti news channel.
Olga's "employees" all had to have cell phones for her to be able to contact them. She complained that dealing with elderly and disabled people was "a hard job, as they have to be transported to work," and some of them need a companion.
Soliciting for handouts is banned in the subway, but begging without soliciting is not a punishable offense. Police occasionally disperse beggars in the Metro, but are unable to detain them, as their bosses take care to provide them with residence documents.
Beggars interviewed by a Vesti correspondent complained that their bosses make them stand on Metro platforms for nine hours a day, but most say they are quite happy with the job.
Those who are able to convincingly exaggerate their need generally earn more. The most financially successful of beggars are children, pregnant women, the disabled and the elderly, although their purported age, handicaps and other "circumstances" often turn out to be fake in police checks.
A 47-year-old woman named Yekaterina, interviewed by Vesti, is a longtime metro beggar who pretends to be a hunch-backed babushka. However, an elderly lady from Ukraine, who usually stands in an underpass outside the Paveletskaya Station, is over 70. She says she cannot survive on her retirement benefit and is happy to have "extra money for food, medicine and a mobile phone."
Moscow police officials have repeatedly pledged to remove beggars from the Metro. They clamp down on begging ahead of major events in the capital, but the vagrants invariably return afterwards. The Metro is also a shelter for the homeless in winter.
Official statistics say there are about 10,000 homeless in Moscow, but NGOs put the figure ten times higher.
