A customs officer said Friday that an official at one of the main customs posts on Russia's western border was detained this week because he had broken up corrupt police activities.


Local police in Bryansk, 350 kilometers southwest of Moscow on the Belarus border, previously said the officer, Anatoly Lyulin, had been arrested last Saturday on suspicion of running a widescale smuggling operation.


Izvestia reported Friday that Lyulin had appealed in October to the acting general prosecutor, Aleksei Ilyushenko, to probe law violations by local police.


In his report Lyulin informed Ilyushenko about several cases of theft and smuggling in which local policemen had been involved, the newspaper said, resulting in customs officers in Bryansk keeping an eye on the police.


Lyulin and 10 subordinates were detained on suspicion of smuggling operations within the last week, the Interior Ministry said. They are still being held.


Antonina Yevstigneeva, a spokeswoman for the State Customs Office, confirmed the Izvestia report in a telephone interview, adding that there was standoff between the customs office in Bryansk and local police.


"Until now police did not bring any accusations against Lyulin," she said. "I do not exclude that it is the mafia's doing because this standoff is profitable for them."


Izvestia said that before he was detained Lyulin had sent a message to the newspaper saying that the deputy head of the Bryansk region administration Sergei Kozlov had told him in a meeting in October to be more "loyal" or he would be fired.


Yevstigneeva said it was no secret that there were corrupt customs officials in Bryansk, but she knew Lyulin as a "direct and honest" man who was "a real professional."


"There are bad personal relations between head of the customs office and the chief of police," she said. "They cannot find common points of contact."