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Crackdown on Russian police

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW JUNE 25. The Russian police have launched a major crackdown on crime and corruption in its own ranks. Seven senior police officers were detained in Moscow on Monday in more than 40 raids on a large criminal ring set up inside the Moscow police's elite investigative directorate, known by the acronym MUR.

The gang planted drugs and guns on people in a blackmail scheme that generated millions of dollars, the Interior Minister, Boris Gryzlov, said. The police seized more than $5 millions in cash in the operation mounted by the Interior Ministry's internal security department jointly with the Federal Security Service, successor to the Soviet KGB. The Interior Ministry said more than 100 people were blackmailed over four years and those who refused to pay were prosecuted and jailed. The ring is also suspected of running a protection racket targeting local businesses and of murdering several businessmen who refused to accept protection. The gang also ran an underground handguns workshop.

During a decade of post-Soviet reforms, the Russian police have become so deeply steeped in crime and corruption that some experts called for disbanding it and replacing with an entirely new force. The Interior Minister, Mr. Gryzlov, an appointee of the President, Vladimir Putin, vowed on Monday to clean up the rot. "We are declaring war on organised crime," he said in televised remarks. "Ranks and titles will mean nothing.

There are no untouchables." A week ago, Federal police arrested the former Interior Minister of Kalmykia, General Sultygov, accused of engaging in illegal caviar and oil business. Being the right-hand man of the Kalmykia President, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who has been running this Russian province as his fiefdom, Gen. Sultygov for two weeks defied Moscow's order to step down and could only be detained after he was lured out of Kalmykia to attend a police conference.

Critics linked the police anti-corruption drive to the coming Parliamentary elections later this year in which the pro-Government party, Unity, led by Mr. Gryzlov will try to win more seats than Communists, Russia's Number 1 party.

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