Komsomolskaya Pravda: “Government to track down fly-by-night companies”
Businessmen forge tax agency and court seals.
The government is continuing to track down bank employees and corrupt civil servants involved in illegal activities. Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin learned about the activity of an interdepartmental group on countering illegal financial transactions and corruption, which was established a month ago.
"In the past few weeks we have held inspections at five large banks, and we found a large number of documents at one of them, showing that the bank was involved in illegal operations," First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, who heads the interdepartmental group, said. "We found over 500 stamps of various companies (mostly fly-by-night ones), about 10 seals of tax inspection agencies and a Moscow court and many other documents, which led us to conclude that these organisations were involved in illegal operations. Criminal cases have been opened and a number of individuals have been detained."
Searches were held in the offices of 30 large companies, where numerous documents were discovered confirming their involvement in illegal activities. Zubkov is now trying to establish coordinated work between different departments, the Interior Ministry, the Federal Tax Service and the Investigative Committee.
According to Zubkov, only joint work will help them to reduce the large sums of money that are being transferred abroad.
"Regarding your achievements, I hope that all these cases will be brought to their legal conclusion jointly with law enforcement agencies and courts," Putin said.
Meanwhile, Federal Financial Monitoring Service head Yury Chikhanchin discussed legislative changes in this respect. Amendments will be submitted for approval on March 30.
"We give banks an opportunity to suspend transactions or to refuse to conduct transactions which they consider suspicious," Chikhanchin said. "In addition, we are considering amendments to the Criminal Code, that would prevent fly-by-night firms from operating on the financial market."
Alexei Zhukov
