Suspicious passion

The intelligence services became interested in the "survivability" of the capital's casinos

Representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office and the FSB, as Vremya Novostei learned, began an investigation in connection with the mysterious situation around a number of large capital casinos. As is known, six gambling establishments - "Crystal", "Golden Palace", "Golden Palace Weekend", "Bakara", "Cosmos" and "Sol" - were closed in early October after police checks as part of a large-scale campaign against "Georgian criminals". It was then publicly announced that massive violations had been detected in these casinos and that they were controlled by “Georgian crime bosses” who pocketed most of the proceeds. The Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that the activities of these establishments were suspended, and the issue of initiating criminal cases was being resolved. However, less than a week later, as it later turned out, all these casinos reopened without unnecessary fanfare and continued to operate.

It was this conflict that allegedly interested counterintelligence officers and prosecutors, who suspected that we could be talking about corruption. Details of the inspection are kept secret. However, there is supposedly operational information according to which certain people could pay certain officials a very large sum - a total of almost $30 million - in order to “resolve the issue” of the continuation of the operation of gambling establishments. And in this regard, according to as yet unconfirmed data, the Prosecutor General’s Office, together with the FSB, is conducting a pre-investigation check. Within its framework, relevant events began to be held last week.

The Prosecutor General's Office has so far refused to comment on these data, citing the secrecy of the investigation, noting only that if any results appear, they will be reported. In the casinos themselves, which came under the October inspection, our correspondent was told that they opened just a few days after the police visited. As for the claims previously made by the police against these casinos, they refused to comment on them.

At the same time, it became known that last week employees of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the FSB visited one of the employees of the Department of Economic Security (DES) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the rank of lieutenant. Documents were confiscated from his office, and the employee himself was taken to a temporary detention center. However, he was released 48 hours later. The DEB itself confirmed the story of the employee’s temporary detention, noting that it was a “routine check.” The Ministry of Internal Affairs explained that the “misunderstanding” was related to an old criminal case not related to the casino.

However, in any case, in the casino story, the Ministry of Internal Affairs found itself in an interesting situation. Either the police, when reporting the exposure a month ago, were, to put it mildly, exaggerating the violations that had been revealed, or someone actually managed to “resolve the issue.”

Sergey RYBIN