Police protection of thieves for money

Press, 6 January 1987, Page 10

Police protection of thieves for money

NZPA-Reuter Moscow

Investigators probing five murders have uncovered an extensive corruption racket in which police protected thieves’ dealing in spare parts for cars in a Soviet provincial town, according to an official newspaper. Concluding a sensational two-part series on events in Michurinsk, 370 km-south-east of Moscow, the daily “Sotsialisticheskaya Industria” said five people who were murdered for money .were last seen alive when men in police uniforms stopped their car. Following up a theory that the uniformed men were the killers, investigators from Moscow found immense police corruption including the racket in which local militiamen took bribes from thieves stealing piston rings from the nearby Zaporozhets

car factory. Spare parts for the Zaporozhets, the smallest Soviet car, are so scarce that drivers pay enormous sums on the black market rather than wait for years for parts from official outlets. “The whole town knew that things were bad in the militia,” the newspaper said. “This spare part (the piston ring) was valued higher than a person’s life.” One of the main villains, a police officer named N. Loganov, now in jail, beat up a group of thieves he had arrested and threatened to press charges against them if they did not pay him off. Meanwhile his assistants were outside stripping spare parts from the thieves’ car, the newspaper said. Another corrupt policeman was an Inspector

Safronov who, while his wife was dying of cancer, reportedly had an affair with a woman from the car plant. She advised a fellow worker to steal some spare parts and then tipped off her lover to raid her colleague’s house. To overlook the crime, Safronov accepted a bribe of 3000 roubles ($8700), which the tempted worker’s mother had been saving to pay for her own funeral, the newspaper said.

Another scandal involved a gang of criminals from a neighbouring town who employed an off-duty policeman from Moscow to stop a band of thieves from Michurinsk and confiscate their stolen goods. The first gang got the goods and the policeman earned 1000 roubles ($2900).