MOSCOW, February 13 (AVN) - The Russian financial intelligence will be established as a separate federal structure in the first half of 2001, Director of the Russian Federal Tax Police Service Vyacheslav Saltaganov said on Tuesday.
The new organisation "will have nothing in common with foreign or any other kind of intelligence as it is regularly perceived," Saltaganov told the Military News Agency. It will not be a branch of the tax police either. "We oppose establishing the financial intelligence under the auspices of law-enforcement agencies," he stressed.
According to Soltaganov, the financial intelligence will be a separate organisation forming part of the Finance Ministry or the Central Bank. Its main mission is to analyse all large financial flows in the country.
The new body will help achieve "a radical breakthrough in combating shadow capital turnover," Soltaganov said. It will work in close contact with the tax police and employ "independent professionals, civilians - specialists, auditors, financiers," he stressed. They will deal with documents, databases, accounts, banks and legal entities, the director noted.
Soltaganov was speaking after a joint session of the Tax Police Service and the Tax Ministry boards.