After 13 years, the Ministry of Internal Affairs regained its anti-drug and passport and visa divisions: the Federal Drug Control Service and the Federal Migration Service were merged into the structure of the department. As a result of the merger, the services themselves receive additional powers that have long been requested

Employees of the Federal Migration Service and the Federal Drug Control Service during a joint raid on nightclubs in Moscow (Photo: RIA Novosti)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, April 5, announced the subordination of the Federal Service for Drug Control (FSKN) and the Federal Migration Service (FMS) to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). Both liquidated departments, after joining the Ministry of Internal Affairs, are implementing their long-standing plans - increasing their powers.

FSKN

The issue of merging the Federal Drug Control Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs has been discussed for more than a year. As a source close to the presidential administration told RBC, the head of the department, Viktor Ivanov, was against the liquidation of the Federal Drug Control Service. Ivanov was appointed to the position of head of the Federal Drug Control Service in May 2008; before that, he worked for a long time in the administration of President Vladimir Putin, in particular, from 2004 to 2008 he served as assistant to the president for personnel matters.

Over the past few years, the Federal Drug Control Service has been trying to expand the range of its interests; in particular, the agency wanted to monopolize the sphere of rehabilitation and socialization of drug addicts. The Federal Drug Control Service has even developed a state program that involves uniting about 500 rehabilitation centers existing in Russia under the auspices of the Federal Drug Control Service. They were planned to be able to receive grants from the state to help drug addicts. Initially, the Federal Drug Control Service requested more than 150 billion rubles from the state for these purposes. Subsequently, the estimated cost of the program was reduced to 1.5 billion.

The department received the authority to provide financial and organizational support to rehabilitation NGOs in August 2014 by Putin’s decree. But Ivanov never succeeded in implementing the program, since the Ministry of Finance refused to allocate money for it. The Federal Drug Control Service also failed to approve the relevant law on service, which was developed back in 2013. This law significantly expanded the powers of the service: the department wanted to conduct medical examinations, issue orders to companies and individual entrepreneurs so that they “take measures to prevent drug trafficking,” and even through the courts, suspend the work of companies if they did not comply with the service’s orders.

But for its main work - countering drug trafficking - the Federal Drug Control Service was criticized by experts who compared the service’s indicators with those of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Police officers are dedicated to solving low-level or moderate drug crimes. Experts from the St. Petersburg Institute of Law Enforcement Problems , in a report on the effectiveness of the work of the two departments, stated that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is ahead of the Federal Drug Control Service in the number of crimes solved, and the Federal Drug Control Service is ahead of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the volume of seized drugs.

In the spring of 2015, Ivanov, commenting on rumors about a possible reorganization of his department, said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has higher rates of arrests of ordinary drug users, but the Federal Drug Control Service is focusing on large suppliers and distributors of drugs. “90% of all wholesale drug shipments are seized by the Federal Drug Control Service,” Ivanov emphasized.

It is still unclear what will happen to the more than 30 thousand FSKN employees who are on the department’s staff. Putin did not inform about layoffs in the Federal Drug Control Service at the meeting with representatives of departments; he only stated that “this entire structure will work self-sufficiently, independently, but within the framework of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.” The Federal Drug Control Service itself announced in mid-January that it was optimizing its structure and staff.

What structural unit will be created in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in connection with joining the Federal Drug Control Service has not yet been announced. Before the creation of the Federal Drug Control Service, the fight against drugs in the Ministry of Internal Affairs was carried out by the Main Directorate for Combating Illicit Drug Trafficking (GUBNON). After disbandment, an anti-drug department was created within the structure of the Main Directorate of Criminal Investigation and special departments in the regions. As Kommersant wrote, after the liquidation of the Federal Drug Control Service, it is planned to transfer the drug police to the criminal investigation departments. In addition, according to the newspaper, the possibility of recreating GUBNON is being discussed.

FMS

The FMS became an independent unit in 2004, when the agency left the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In recent years, the FMS has complained that the service is not a law enforcement agency and does not have the functions necessary to work with migrants, explains RBC’s interlocutor at the FMS. Last week, Nadezhda Voronina, deputy head of the monitoring department of the department for organizing work with foreign citizens of the FMS, spoke about the lack of authority at a round table in the Public Chamber.

In the spring of 2014, the FMS developed a bill “On Immigration Control,” which significantly expanded the powers of the department and turned it into a full-fledged law enforcement agency. If this law were approved by the State Duma and signed by the president, service employees could conduct inspections of legal entities, cancel licenses and confiscate permits from employers. In addition, department employees would have the right to initiate and investigate criminal cases for organizing illegal migration, check citizens’ documents and use weapons.

Before its liquidation, the competence of the FMS included issues of granting citizenship, issuing visas to enter Russia, issuing and issuing passports to citizens of the Russian Federation, deportation and entry bans for violators of migration legislation. The leadership of the department consists of representatives of law enforcement agencies. Three of the eight deputy heads of the FMS Konstantin Romodanovsky come from state security agencies, like himself, and three more come from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

After staff reductions in the summer of 2015, the Federal Migration Service employed 36 thousand people. It is already known that the Federal Migration Service will reduce another 30%: this is stated in Putin’s decree on the merger of structures. The very fact of the return of the FMS to the Ministry of Internal Affairs does not mean that “the independent state was considered unsuccessful,” presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “It’s just that as a result of interdepartmental study, we came to the conclusion that at this stage such a structure is more appropriate,” Peskov explained.

The fate of the current head of the FMS Romodanovsky will be decided by Putin, deputy head of the FMS Ekaterina Egorova told RBC on Tuesday.

President of the Migration 21st Century Foundation, former deputy director of the Federal Migration Service Vyacheslav Postavnin, in a conversation with RBC, noted that the decision to merge departments was long overdue, since recently the Ministry of Internal Affairs has received some of the functions of the migration service. According to him, there are two options for subordinating the FMS to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The first option assumes that the FMS remains a service, but within the framework of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the head of the migration department becomes the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.

“The second option is that the FMS will essentially turn into a passport and visa center under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which it was before. The functions of monitoring migrants and regulating migration will then need to be given to someone, since the Ministry of Internal Affairs was not involved in this,” adds Postavnin. According to him, the function of issuing labor patents to migrants can be given either to the regions, as is happening in Moscow, or to the Ministry of Labor.

After joining the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FMS to some extent realized its desire to expand its powers, Postavnin clarifies. But these powers - inquiry, interrogation, operational work - will most likely not be needed by the service employees, Postavnin is sure. In his opinion, direct work with migrants will be carried out by police officers - district police officers, guards, etc., since the FMS will concentrate on passport and visa work.

New police concerns: what will the transition of the FMS and FSKN under the Ministry of Internal Affairs lead to?