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growing in recent years: 192 thousand for the entire 2018, 319 thousand for 2022.
The statistics of suspended criminal cases are especially alarming, Titov points out. Under the article on fraud, they increased by 23%; they make up almost half (48%) of all cases in proceedings under Article 159. Almost all such cases have been suspended due to failure to identify the persons to be charged as accused.
Russia is suffering from a “critical shortage” of police officers. At least, that’s according to Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, who said a few weeks ago that 5,000 law enforcement employees had resigned in the previous month alone. This is despite the fact that the country has one of the world's highest rates of officers per capita and is supposed to add another 16,000 by 2026 in accordance with a decree Putin issued last year.
If Russia is a police state, this purported shortage of police has not given citizens a break. According to a new report from BBC News Russian, the lack of law enforcement personnel has led to a rise in police violence — a problem that’s long been endemic in Russian society. “Rather than finding evidence [for a crime], it’s easier to just drag the first person you see into the station and beat him until he takes the fall,” explained a former police major from Tomsk.
In many places, the officer deficit has also left Russians defecseless against their fellow citizens. According to the BBC’s sources, police are increasingly refusing to open criminal cases in response to reports from the public, telling citizens they simply don’t have enough resources.
In September the state seized 94.2% of methane producer Metafrax Chemicals. A court declared the 1992 privatization of the company illegal. Back in the 1990s, a series of deals saw the company acquired by future billionaire Dmitry Ryboloblev. Until this month, Metafrax belonged to Rybolovlev’s ex-business partner, Seyfeddin Rustamov. Prosecutors offered a very significant justification for this nationalization: the original Metafrax privatization, they claimed in case materials, was done “without a government decision” and was “a violation of the economic sovereignty of the Russian Federation and its defence capability.” The wording is important. It casts doubt on the competence of regional authorities involved in arranging privatizations (in the 1990s, state property was managed (and disposed of) at regional level, not federal). This raises the legal possibility of challenging many of the deals that were done in that era.
Russia’s richest man, Andrei Melnichenko, was another who had assets seized. The Prosecutor General’s Office demanded the seizure of his Sibeko energy company, which Melnichenko purchased from former minister Mikhail Abyzov in 2018 for 31.8 billion rubles (about $500 million at the time). Within a year, Abyzov was jailed on corruption charges. Now, the Prosecutor General’s Office believes that the Sibeko deal was corrupt.
The January transfer of shares in the Far East Shipping Company to the state. This company was part of the FESCO transport group, owned by
36 RUSSIA Country Report October 2023 www.intellinews.com