Translated material
Lethal force
The Ministry of Internal Affairs is preparing for a structural revolution
The Russian police are preparing to become a superpower agency. According to information obtained by the newspaper Vremya Novostey, Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Rushailo has developed and has almost agreed with the country's leadership a new concept for the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which can make him a kind of heavyweight record holder, not only in law enforcement, but also in political terms. As we have learned, in recent weeks the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs has completed a series of consultations with the presidential administration and the government on plans for a serious structural reform of the department. Over the course of two months of negotiations, the parties were able to reach a compromise and even prepared a draft package of documents - both on the reworking of the Ministry of Internal Affairs itself, and on the preparation of the corresponding presidential decrees. The question of their approval or rejection is expected to be considered after the November holidays. According to our sources, Mr. Rushailo’s initiatives do not raise any fundamental objections in the Kremlin, and the likelihood that they will be implemented is very high. If this happens, a real threat of serious changes will hang over all other security forces.Although the project is about reforming only the police department, this initiative - in fact, multiplying the power and powers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - will inevitably lead to a disruption of the balance of power that has developed between different departments in the law enforcement and partly political system.
From the outside, the measures prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs look very modest. According to the reform project, it is planned to expand and strengthen the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (GUBOP), organizing on its basis a new structure with the proposed name - the Federal Committee for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. In the opinion of a person uninitiated in police affairs, this should not cause any fundamental changes - the committee will remain within the structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and will be directly subordinate to one of the deputy ministers. However, observers in the Ministry of Internal Affairs itself, where, by the way, the reform is spoken of almost as a fait accompli, the emergence of a new service is considered a revolutionary event.
Firstly, the creation of the committee will cause a radical redistribution of functions between different departments of the ministry. According to available information, almost all aspects of the fight against organized crime and corruption, hitherto divided between various specialized units, will be transferred to the new service. Thus, the investigation of crimes in the credit and financial sphere, in the fuel and energy sector, privatization, abuse of high-ranking officials was mainly within the competence of the GUBEP (Department for Economic Crimes), contract killings were primarily the responsibility of the criminal investigation department (GUUR), etc. The fighters themselves against organized crime in such a system were “equals among equals”, having their own “plot” - the fight against theft of weapons and their trade, terrorism, hostage-taking, extortion, control over criminal authorities. At the same time, all services maintained a clear internal corporate identity, and each was quite independent in choosing priorities, partly even competing with others. The created committee, in fact, will take over all the most important and significant areas of work, taking them from other services of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - following the simple logic that in any more or less large crime, by definition, there are always manifestations of organized crime. In other words, whether this is good or bad is difficult to judge, but one unit (respectively, one leadership group) will concentrate the entire asset of shock criminal cases and developments of the entire system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
However, the main advantage of the committee as a new power unit will lie in another feature of the planned reform, which, quite possibly, will be classified as classified, since it concerns the secret services of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. We are talking about services with names that mean nothing to the uninitiated - OPU (Operational Search Directorate), UOTM (Operational and Technical Measures Directorate), UOTR (Operational and Technical Intelligence Directorate), etc. - without which it cannot Nowadays, no more or less serious investigation can be done. These units provide detectives from the same GUBOP, GUBEP, GUUR, conducting criminal cases, with covert methods of obtaining information, such as external surveillance, covert video recording, interception of telephone and oral conversations, and other similar services. These services are also planned to be included in the new committee.
The fundamental importance of this point lies in the fact that until now such units have served all specialized headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on equal terms. If they find themselves subordinate to the committee, then the fighters against organized crime will essentially take control of the activities of all operational services of the ministry that are not formally related to the committee. After all, if the same specialists in economic crime, who have not left for the new service, need to follow someone or listen to someone (and the work of a modern high-level detective is almost impossible without this), they will have to write requests to the same committee from which henceforth the fate of all “extraneous” investigations will depend. In addition, the committee’s credibility will inevitably be added by the transfer to its subordination of two other previously independent departments of the ministry - resource support, supplying operatives with all the necessary equipment - from cars to computers, as well as the “R” department - for combating crimes in the sphere of high technologies (computer networks, radio broadcasts, cellular communications, etc.).
The truly “Superman” image of the committee, if it is created, will be completed by the completely vertical structure of its regional divisions, repeating the central apparatus of the committee described above. In other words, the entire striking power of the criminal component of the police in the regions will be removed from the influence of local authorities and will receive complete carte blanche to develop any cases and officials of any rank. According to the reform project, small subcommittees are guaranteed to be formed in federal districts, and over time, perhaps, in each subject of the federation. The police vertical will be further strengthened by the already finally resolved issue of creating an investigation in the districts independent of local authorities - it will include the already emerging regional divisions of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Investigative Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is quite obvious that in this situation, in terms of political influence, the Ministry of Internal Affairs will grow head and shoulders above all other law enforcement agencies - the FSB, the tax police and partly customs. Accordingly, after the reform, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Vladimir Rushailo himself, who is the author of all the proposed changes and, if successful, will be the main “conductor” of the new super service, will appear in a completely different light after the reform. By the way, although employees at the Ministry of Internal Affairs have different attitudes towards the planned shake-ups (any reform is always a lot of unnecessary problems), almost everyone admits that the former head of the Moscow RUBOP played the combination with the reform like an experienced chess player who managed to make a queen out of a pawn. Almost all the ministers preceding Mr. Rushailo at one time tried to somehow increase the importance of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the system of state power (suffice it to recall Anatoly Kulikov, who tried to give his department heavy artillery, attack helicopters and attack aircraft), but they all failed. Mr. Rushailo may be able to do something that his predecessors could not even dream of, without ever revealing his Napoleonic ambitions. After all, the police themselves formally did not come out with reform initiatives, did not particularly intrigue and did not attract attention to themselves at all - they simply carried out... the presidential decree of July 31, 2000 with the abstract title “Issues of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation,” which instructed to bring the structure of the ministry to compliance with the scheme of federal districts.
It is quite obvious that the beginning of a radical reform in the Ministry of Internal Affairs will inevitably stir up all other security forces. After all, then the existing balance of power in the system will be disrupted, and in addition, the police will grab a piece, which other intelligence services have begun to actively lay claim to in recent months (the tax police are openly trying to expand their powers and become the financial police; there is periodic talk about a possible merger of the FSB with the former “daughters” of the KGB - FAPSI, FPS and FSO; the Ministry of Justice is pushing the possibility of transferring to itself part of the functions of the Prosecutor General’s Office; customs is in agony learning the criminal trade and trying to become full-fledged security forces). However, Vladimir Rushailo, it seems, will still be able to get ahead of them all. According to reports, the only obstacle to his plans now is the question of money. Any reform requires additional costs. But, as far as we know, this problem is not fatal - the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to unofficial information, agrees to do without very large financial investments in the first couple of days, especially since the bulk of what is necessary for the new structure (equipment, people and buildings) is available. Moreover, in this case, the main thing is not money, but power.