Military prosecutors are probing allegations that officers from the organized crime directorate of the Federal Security Service ran an extortion ring and had ties to a powerful criminal group, officials said Friday.
Sergei Ushakov, a spokesman for the Military Prosecutor's Office, said investigators had begun the probe April 30 and have already found that some of the corruption allegations "seem to be correct."
Officers of the service's organized crime directorate are suspected in connection with more than a dozen incidents of armed assault, extortion and murder threats, the Segodnya newspaper reported earlier this week.
The Segodnya report came on top of an official query by a State Duma legislator alleging officers with the crime directorate had ties to the Podolsk criminal group.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, is the main successor to the Soviet KGB.
Ushakov would not provide details about the investigation, which Segodnya reported was initiated after several Moscow businessmen complained of falling victim to a gang of uniformed racketeers.
The businessmen told the Interior Ministry's internal security directorate that camouflaged men claiming to be police had raided their offices demanding cash.
Alexander Zaitsev, the head of the analytical division of the internal security directorate, confirmed Friday that his colleagues "have worked" on an investigation of FSB officers, but he added that "everything is still being checked."
Segodnya reported that Interior Ministry investigators had struggled to make headway on the case until the suspects were caught by a video camera in one of the offices they were raiding. The film showed as many as 11 officers of the FSB's organized crime directorate, Segodnya said.
The daily also said police believe a colonel in the organized crime directorate tried to extort $70,000 from another Moscow businessman in a separate case.
Yury Shchekochikhin, a member of the State Duma's corruption committee, filed an official inquiry last week asking for answers to questions about the activities of the directorate, headed by General Yevgeny Khokholkov.
"Is it true that ... subordinates [of this directorate] have been practicing extortion and threatened to kill with the consent of their commanders?" Shchekochikhin asked in the inquiry, which was sent to President Boris Yeltsin's Security Council and the Prosecutor General's Office as well as to the FSB.
The legislator, who is also an investigative journalist for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, stated in a telephone interview Friday that he has carried out an independent investigation and has found what he believes is evidence of the officers' involvement in extortion.
Shchekochikhin said officers from the organized crime directorate are suspected of summoning the director of a Moscow furniture shop to FSB's Lubyanka headquarters and then taking him to a nearby forest, where he was forced to dig a grave for himself. They then are said to have held a mock execution before letting their victim go.
In his inquiry Shchekochikhin also asked "Is true that some of [the organized crime directorate's officers] are patronizing the Podolsk organized crime group and fulfilling their assignments?"
The Podolsk group is one of the largest gangs in the Moscow region. It has approximately 2,500 members and controls the area around the city of Podolsk, according to Rossiiskaya Prestupnost, a guide to the Russian underworld.
None of the FSB spokesmen reached by telephone Friday would comment on the allegations of corruption in their ranks. Shchekochikhin said, however, that officers not involved in shady activities have already "started a mutiny" against their allegedly crooked colleagues.