#6278
[Second Issue of the Day]
#10
gazeta.ru
May 28, 2002
New economic crime agency in the offing
By Irina Kuzmenko
In the near future, a new unit to deal with money laundering is to be established under the aegis of the Russian Interior Ministry’s directorate for combating economic crimes. The Ministry hopes the unit will enable it to regain the leading role in the sphere, recently seized from it by the Finance Ministry’s Committee for Financial Monitoring (CFM).
The CFM (also known as the financial intelligence) was established last year by the Finance Ministry as the key agency in charge of combating money laundering. Its work so far, however, has brought no visible results and despite all efforts, Russia has still not been crossed off the FATF ''black list''.
At the initiative of Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, the new unit is to be established under the auspices of the Ministry’s economic crimes unit (GUBEP), which will be in charge of detecting crimes connected with the legalization of criminally derived proceeds. The Ministry’s move is seen by many as an intrusion into the domain of the CFM, the Finance Ministry’s agency for tracking dubious transactions and detecting cases of money-laundering. Outwardly, however, the Committee has welcomed the creation of the new organ and hopes for fruitful cooperation.
An official of the GUBEP press-service told Gazeta.Ru that the new department, which will be called the Operations and Investigation Bureau, will work within the framework of the law on operational and investigative activity. By probing money-laundering cases, members of the police force will closely interact with the Finance Ministry’s CFM, as well as with other governmental agencies. The new department will also be in charge of cutting off financial sources for terror networks functioning in Russia.
Persuading the powers-that-be that such an organ is important, was a prolonged affair for the chief of the Interior Ministry Boris Gryzlov. Back in 2000, when the financial intelligence unit was yet to be established and the ministries were debating on the status of the new organ, and to which agency it should belong, Boris Gryzlov insisted that his subordinates should take part in its work. But it took the Ministry more than a year to persuade the government.
As Gazeta.Ru wrote earlier, in April GUBEP convened a news conference, where the deputy chief of the economic crime directorate reported preliminary results of investigations into several cases of money laundering totaling $300 million. The money had been channeled out of Russia via foreign banks to the United States. To investigate these cases, a joint Russian-American workgroup had been set up, comprising the Interior Ministry’s investigators and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US.
Even though the probe was launched by the Interior Ministry two years ago, Boris Gryzlov’s move, as it turns out, proved successful. In comparison, the work of the financial intelligence, set up last year and endowed with wide-ranging powers in the sphere of combating money laundering, has not brought any visible results so far. This is significant in that it is high time Russia started providing foreign investors and the international community with signs that it takes money-laundering and the financing of terrorists seriously.
The CFM has greeted the emergence of the new organ. The Committee’s spokesperson Natalia Konovalova told Gazeta.Ru that on Monday the financial intelligence chief Viktor Zoubkov had discussed the issue with the GUBEP chief Alexei Orlov and backed the Interior Ministry’s initiative. ''We treat the creation of a special department under the Interior Ministry absolutely positively, as it marks the beginning of a serious fight against the legalization of criminally derived incomes,'' the spokesperson said. ''It would be good, if every agency established a similar department of its own''.
According to Konovalova, the Interior Ministry’s investigators will have access to the data retrieved by the financial intelligence agents. So far, no official agreements have been signed between the Committee and the Interior Ministry, she admitted, but this is a matter for the near future.
At the same time, a GUBEP official told Gazeta.Ru that without their assistance, the financial intelligence would not succeed in its work. The new unit under the economic crime directorate will investigate money-laundering cases detected by the CFM and send case files to court.
The official added that the establishment of the Operations and Investigation Bureau is in the interests of the CFM since it cannot investigate cases in which senior Finance Ministry officials may be implicated, ''whereas our duty is to investigate all citizens and public officials who have committed a crime in this area''.
Back to the Top Next Article
- Back to the Top -