This event entered all textbooks on criminalistics as the most daring and unexpected in the history of robberies of the XX century. In one of the hot July days of 1908, a small group of three policemen appeared in the port of Baku. They proceeded to the steamer “Nikolai I”, which was about to set sail and demanded to let them on board under the guise of checking the documents of the personnel.
The request was very strange, as the steamer, packed with armed guards was carrying a huge amount of money from the State Bank of Azerbaijan in safes, and an inspection was out of the question.
However, in the seconds of confusion of the sailors the unthinkable happened. In the blink of an eye, the guards of the steamer were partly caught in the fire and partly trapped in the engine room of the ship. The policemen turned out to be uniformed bandits.
Such a plot could be used to make a Hollywood blockbuster. Then two criminals break into the cabin where the Azerbaijani treasury is kept in Swiss safes. It was impossible to open the famous safe, if not for one “but”. One of the criminals turned out to be the most virtuoso bear-catcher in Europe, nicknamed Ahmed. While the Baku police is on alert and rushes at full speed to the port, Ahmed calmly gets down to business and in a few minutes, takes possession of the booty.
The criminals got their hands on 1,200,000 rubles, a cosmic sum for those times (today it is several tens of millions of dollars). But on reaching the deck, the intruders found that they were surrounded by the police. The ship was blocked, and there was no way out of the situation.
Immediately another unbelievable event happens - two criminals come on deck with their hands up, but instead of surrendering, they jump overboard into a boat that suddenly appears and take off into the open sea. The police are confused and unable to pursue.
According to the archives, the famous Ahmed would later become the Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, and his partner, nicknamed Ryaboy, would be called simply Comrade Stalin a few years later.
