The head of one of the main customs offices on Russia's western border has been detained together with 10 subordinates on suspicion of wide-scale smuggling operations, police officials said Wednesday.


Anatoly Nikitin, deputy head of the police department in Bryansk, 350 kilometers southwest of Moscow, said that on Saturday police detained Anatoly Lyulin, head of the local customs office and a former senior KGB officer.


Nikitin refused to give more details but Yevgeny Ryabtsev, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Moscow, said: "He was detained together with his 10 subordinates on suspicion of wide-scale smuggling operations." He gave no details of the allegations.


Itar-Tass reported that police had confiscated a large quantity of hard currency, blank forms to transport cargo across the border and valuable goods from the detainees.


The agency quoted General Alexander Rusakov, head of the local police department, as saying that influential officials from the State Customs Office had tried to exert pressure on him to stop the investigation of corruption at the Bryansk customs office.


Rusakov told Itar-Tass he had not ruled out that the investigation in Bryansk could lead to high-ranking officials.


Antonina Yevstigneyeva, a spokeswoman for the State Customs Office, denied that her office exerted pressure on the police. "It is a lie," she said. "We just sent our top official to Bryansk to find out why police detained Lyulin. It is not pressure."


She said they had not received any answer from police. "Police have not told us yet what accusations they brought against Lyulin."


Yevstigneyeva said Lyulin had had nothing to do with organized crime and corruption. She confirmed that police had detained 10 customs office employees but said they had been detained not together with Lyulin, but over the last three years for different violations including corruption and smuggling.


She said the customs office in Bryansk, which employed 800 people, was one of the biggest offices on the western border of Russia and until now had worked very well.