From now on, the chief of the Interior Ministry's Investigative Committee will be appointed by the President, but the candidate will be proposed by the Prime Minister.
Under a decree by President Medvedev published on Friday, some amendments are introduced in the regulatory acts on the Interior Ministry, including the Statute on the Ministry and some of its departments. The aim of the amendments is to bring the rules in line with the actual practice, a source at the Interior Ministry reported. For example, Interior Affairs agencies are now called not departments "in" but departments "for" a region or territory, emphasizing their designation as federal rather than regional departments.
Under a more substantive amendment, the head of the Interior Ministry's Investigative Committee (IC) will be proposed not by the Interior Minister but by the Prime Minister and will be appointed by the President. Over the past few years, the chief of the IC had the rank of Deputy Interior Minister. Thus, the procedure of his appointment is equivalent to that of the appointment of other deputy ministers (the candidates are proposed by the Prime Minister), says Irina Dudukina, the spokeswoman for the IC.
At present, the IC is headed by Vladimir Anichin, Vladimir Putin's former classmate at the Leningrad State University's Law Department. Last year, he was expected to retire on pension to be replaced by the chief of the Interior Ministry's Department for the Central Federal District, Valery Kozhokar, a former classmate of Dmitry Medvedev at Leningrad University's Law Department. However, at the end of last year, the President extended Anichin's tenure and kept him in his post.
Mr. Kozhokar may lose his current post if another measure to optimize the structure of the Interior Ministry is carried out by January 1, 2012 in accordance with Medvedev's December decree on cutting the ministry's staff by 20% (more than 200,000 persons). In December, a decision was made to shut down two departments at the Central Office: the Transport Department and the Department for Restricted Territories and High Security Facilities (still accounting for just several hundred members of the central staff).
Two sources at the Interior Ministry said that a decision is about to be taken to disband the Interior Ministry Main Directorates for federal districts, with the exception of the Directorate for the Southern Federal District, where it is needed in order to coordinate counterterrorist activities. While disbanding the Transportation Department is a debatable move that may weaken crime control on transport, disbanding the district Main Directorates makes sense: these structures have proved to be of little use and merely add confusion to management, says an officer at the Central Staff. Their liquidation would cut several thousand staff positions. However, the Interior Ministry's Directorate for the Central Federal District gained publicity in 2008 by investigating the case against Sergei Shnaider (Semyon Mogilevich) on tax evasion charges as well as the tax evasion charges against the company TNK several years ago.
The two Interior Ministry sources also said that beginning with this year, the cadets at Interior Ministry schools and colleges will not be awarded police ranks and will remain civilians, which will cut more than 20,000 police jobs. Cadets will only be awarded military ranks after they graduate from the police academy.
Alexei Nikolsky