Russian Interior Ministry Cooperates With Foreign Law Enforcers

An international department for the cooperation with law enforcers from foreign countries and former Soviet republics has been set up at the Main Department for Combating Organised Crime of the Russian Interior Ministry's Criminal Police, Viktor Plekhanov, a ministerial official, told a press-conference on Tuesday. According to him, this international department has close contacts with the police of Germany, Italy, Belgium and the US FBI. In particular, Russian law enforcers and their US colleagues have recently arrested a criminal money-laundering group. The criminals had remitted to the USA over 160 million dollars via Latvia. In addition to that, jointly with policemen from Bulgaria and Moldova, Russian law-enforcers stopped the activities of a criminal group which had killed 15 people, including four Moldovan policemen. Viktor Plekhanov noted that department officials were running preventive operations as well.