Serguei Cheloukhine

Police Integrity in Russia

This chapter explores the contours of police integrity in Russia. The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index suggests that Russia is perceived as a highly corrupt country. With about 1 million employees, the Russian police are one of the largest police agencies in the world. This chapter relies on the police integrity survey conducted in 2012–2013. Questionnaires were distributed to the police officers in two regions of the Russian Federation: Southern District–Rostov Region and North Caucasus–Karachaevo Cherkessia. With two exceptions, the respondents did not perceive the behaviors described in the scenarios as very serious. While most of the respondents did not have any problems recognizing these behaviors as rule violating, they supported and expected police agencies to mete out no discipline for the majority of these behaviors. Finally, the results suggest that the code of silence covers all of the behaviors described in the questionnaire.

Match Fixing in Soccer: Organization, Structure and Policing. A Russian Perspective

Fixing soccer games is a thriving business which will continue in the near and far future, unless some extreme mechanisms of control are put in place and implemented. All these illegal activities are derived from a social nature of human being, mercantile ambition, and thirst for glory and, of course, struggle for power. Every fixed match has its own character and goal. We will examine this phenomenon in three categories. First is aimed at receiving illegal profit. Second one is usually organized by club presidents and owners. Many of them are politicians, tycoons or “Russian Oligarchs” whose living credo is “victory by all costs”. The third one is splitting game scores. Soccer in Russia is not a sport competition but rather a business to make big money; buying and selling players, millions of dollars in advertisement contracts, television and the internet shows. This chapter attempts to investigate the nature and depth of match fixing in the Russian football and offer possible solutions to curb its growth.

The Parties’ Strategies and Tactics

The current Russian political leadership refuses to acknowledge that the insurgency’s political aims could have any degree of legitimacy. As a result, there are few practical constraints on its conduct. Moscow regards the Northern Caucasus as an integral part of the country and it fears that a dangerous precedent would be established if it were to allow Chechnya (and perhaps some nearby political subjects with a small ethnic Russian population) to leave the Federation (e.g., Dagestan).

The Northern Caucasus as a Colonial Phenomenon

Russia, like the Soviet Union, is a multi-national empire. Throughout recent history, most empires (except where the original local population was “eliminated”) are inherently unstable. Most of the major empires that survive for long periods of time can attribute their success to their superior governmental organization and engineering capacity, both of which are usually accompanied by military prowess.

Conflict Dynamics: Tipping Points, Social and Political Networks, and Momentum

More than 10 years ago, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the concept of “Tipping Points”. Gladwell equates the concept of “Tipping Points” with epidemics and identifies the concepts of three key rules: the “Law of the Few”, the “Stickiness Factor”, and the “Power of Context”.

Conceptualizations of Russian Counterterrorism

It is a relatively recent development that Russia felt that it is imperative to develop a more sophisticated understanding of combating terrorism. The very first version of the RSFSR Criminal Code was prepared in a short time after the conclusion of the Russian Civil War and several separatist conflicts (e.g., the Baltic States, Poland, and Ukraine). The written law dealt with terrorism in a fairly cursory manner giving a seemingly legal character to what in essence was viewed as “war”.

Conclusion and Final Observations

In April 2009, the Russian Counter-Terrorism Committee announced the halting of terrorism operations in Chechnya and the anticipated withdrawal of some of the 20,000 MVD stationed there. Irrespective of the reliability of the data, there is no doubt that fighting between Russian forces (assisted by their local allies) and insurgent forces continue.

The “Legal Framework” to Fight Terrorists

Back in September 2004, in the small Russian town of Beslan, in the Republic of North Ossetia, the Chechen commander Shamil Basayev masterminded a terrorist attack (the “Beslan Incident”). Over one thousand people, students and their relatives, who came to celebrate the beginning of the school academic year, were taken hostage. A group of more than 30 insurgents staged the operation from the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia.

Modalities of Organized Crime Phenomena

It would be immensely difficult to frame the explanations of Organized Corruption Networks (OCNs), the way they are presented in this book without placing them within the context of theories, discussions, and questions posited by scholars of the organized crime phenomenon. As with many other definitions within the social sciences, there is a myriad of definitions that offer very few, if any, practical explanations that could benefit the law enforcement community in their quest to counter this type of criminality. The lack of agreed upon definition from the sociological standpoint is not as detrimental to the war on organized crime as the fact that the existing legal definitions also suffer from the lack of consistency.

Ways to Fight OCNs: Law-Enforcement Services

It was not until January of 1997 that the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Chapter 22, defined “offences in the area of economic activity.” The definition was included in the chapter sections of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and comprised a structure of crimes, the majority of which were relevant to the developed market economy.