This category of commercialized siloviki behavior should be thought of broadly: Assets to be exchanged for money include information, documents, positions, and even people. The type of assets sold depend on those possessed by the specific agency or officer, but the principle is the same - valuable resources that theoretically belong to the state can be sold (or rented) to willing buyers. Roofing and commissioned cases are in this sense just a subset of this more general category. A few examples from 2007 will illustrate the phenomenon:
• The subdivision of the Moscow police responsible for phone tapping allegedly carried out illegal phone taps on business competitors for a variety of companies.
• A group of current and former siloviki, including personnel from the MVD and the FSO (Federal Guards Service, responsible for leadership security), reportedly sold access passes to government buildings, including the Kremlin, and special permission documents for automobiles, including government license plates complete with flashing blue lights (migalki).
• MVD officers sold positions and ranks within the militia. For example, the head of the criminal police in Tyumen Oblast allegedly paid a $200,000 bribe to be promoted to general.366 The amount of the bribe is an indication of how lucrative corruption can be at the top of the MVD.
Corrupt police officers attract the most press attention, but there are examples from all of the power ministries. In some ways, the armed forces should be an exception to the commercialization of the power ministries, because army officers do not have law enforcement responsibilities and therefore cannot open and close criminal cases, carry out court orders to seize property, and so on. But officers have also figured out how to sell or rent military assets for money. For example, conscripts and even contract soldiers are “rented” by their commanding officers to businessmen to perform menial labor, such as construction, and military firing ranges admit paying customers to shoot weapons. In Chechnya, military personnel have engaged in oil smuggling and sold weapons on the black market or to rebel forces.367
World History
