MOSCOW. July 16 (Interfax) - Russian Investigative Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin has ordered sending a commission to the town of Gus-Khrustalny in the Vladimir region to see how instructions he gave while visiting the town in 2010 are being carried out, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
"Under the Investigative Committee chairman's instructions, a team of experienced officials from the central staff will go to Gus-Khrustalny in the near future to analyze results of the Vladimir regional investigative directorate's work to carry out a set of measures to decriminalize the situation in the district," Markin told Interfax on Friday.
The investigators were supposed to take some measures to solve and probe crimes committed in Gus-Khrustalny from 1998 to 2011.
"Investigators handled 27 criminal cases against members of criminal groups acting in Gus-Khrustalny and a number of officials," Markin said.
Numerous members of organized criminal groups in Gus-Khrustalny were detained after local businessmen sent a letter to then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in 2010. The authors of the letter complained about dominance of criminal groups and inactivity of law enforcement agencies in the city. They claimed that local police dropped criminal investigations or refused to open such investigations into crimes against local businessmen in more than 30 cases.
Prosecution authorities revealed that numerous crimes were committed against businessmen in Gus-Khrustalny from July to October 2010. Criminals set their property on fire, attacked their offices and retail outlets, killed and abducted several businessmen. They were also accused of drug trafficking and bribery.