7. Moscow, Russia
Despite the fact that Russia was opened to the rest of the world twenty five years ago with the fall of the Soviet Union, it is still an enigma to most, even though its capital Moscow is a now a major business, culture and tourism centre and contains the worlds largest population of billionaires. The Russian Mafia (or Bratva) maintain a significant presence within the capital of their motherland, with the notable Solntsevskaya Bratva calling the Sointsevo District of the city home. With the groups activities including arms trafficking, drug distribution, racketeering, robbery and illegal gambling, they are par for the course for inclusion within a GTA game, which could also incorporate their rivalry with the Chechen Mafia, their alliances with Colombian cartels, Chinese triads and Italian mafia families and their American operations to create an international cast of colourful characters. As Russia is widely perceived as one of the most corrupt countries in the developed world, government and business could also have a heavy involvement in proceedings, with the opportunity to create suspiciously similar substitutes of individuals like Vladimir Putin and Roman Abramovich surely too good to pass up in such a circumstance. The fact that Russian characters were a major part of the Eastern European criminal society that was heavily featured in GTA IV could work against a Russian setting, however, despite the fact that the game was set in New York rather than the former Soviet Union itself.