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While international attention is understandably focused on Russia’s covert campaign against Ukraine, a vicious internal struggle for control of economic crime and corruption investigations has erupted within the country’s security apparatus. At stake is not just this politically-important (and lucrative) role, but also potentially dominance of Russia’s complex and extensive range of security agencies — and the spooks are winning.
The struggle is taking place over the Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption (GUEBiPK) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). The directorate is just one of the agencies investigating corruption and economic crimes — the other main ones are the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Investigations Committee (SK) — but it is the largest of them all.
Now that President Vladimir Putin is stepping up his campaign to “de-offshorize” the Russian elite and force them to repatriate their assets to Russia (not least to make them less susceptible to Western sanctions), an increasing emphasis is being placed on financial investigations.
What matters to Putin gets priority, and monopolizing what matters to Putin is a key route to political importance for Russia’s overlapping and competing security agencies. Asserting primacy over these investigations thus became the focus for new turf wars. These were exacerbated by the massive opportunities for corruption, as corruption and economic crime investigations have become notorious excuses for protection racketeering and bribe-taking by security officers.
In February, Putin sacked Lt. General Denis Sugrobov, high-flying head of GUEBiPK. The SK and FSB had teamed up against this: the SK opened a criminal investigation against Sugrobov’s deputy, Kolesnikov, alleging he had tried to entrap an FSB officer on bribery charges, and used this to bring down his boss.
Interior Minister Kolokoltsev is trying to staunch the wound. In early April, Kolesnikov wrote to him from prison, calling the case against him an attempt to destroy GUEBiPK, but Kolokoltsev seems to have known this from the start. He appointed one of his trusted clients, Maj. General Sergei Solopov, as Sugrobov’s acting replacement, and he is hoping that a quick reshuffle and internal investigation will allow him and the MVD to weather the storm.
However, speaking to a gathering of top FSB officers on April 7, Putin highlighted the need to fight attempts to move money out of Russia and launder ill-gotten gains — and the key role the FSB would play in that. Many observers and men and women in the room interpreted that to mean that even if Kolokoltsev saves the MVD’s own agency, it will be forced to accept the primacy of the FSB’s Economic Security Service (SEB), the way the ministry’s Main Directorate for Combating Extremism is already dominated by the equivalent FSB service. Score one more victory for the spooks over the cops.
