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SECURITY AGENCIES: CONSERVATIVE REFORM
Alexey Medvetsky
Summary
Last year saw an important reform in the structure of the national security and law enforcement agencies connected with creation of the Investigative Committee controlled by the president. The greatest political effect of this reform for the entire state administration system was produced by concentration of anticorruption investigative powers in one department that essentially increased Alexander Lukashenko's role as a center of coordination and guarantor of interests of the Belarusian elites. The elite group of security officials, which is used to be linked with eldest son of the president Victor Lukashenko, has become much stronger. By delegating investigative functions to the new agency, the structure of security agencies was simplified. This suggests that the country leadership's intends to minimize risks increased due to the financial recession. In general, the Belarusian elites accepted the rules of the game, however the system is about to face tough times in the next few years.
Trends:
• Re-engineering of security agencies structure aimed at minimization of risks to the senior leadership of the country and better controllability of the elites;
• Clustering of the security elites around President Lukashenko and his eldest son Victor;
• Delegation of economic and political regulation functions to security officials which normally was not their area of expertise.
Reasons for the security agencies reform
The security agencies' composition was made simpler by establishing the Investigative Committee (IC), which was approved by decree No.409 of September 12, 2011. The new agency, which totals nearly 5,000 officers, got to work on January 1, 2012. It has preliminary investigative jurisdiction over the crimes listed in a special part of the Criminal Code. The IC is formed of the investigative units provided by the Prosecutor's Office, Ministry of the Interior and State Control Committee's Financial Investigation Department (SCC FID). The KGB reserved the right to conduct preliminary investigation in cases specified in a number of Criminal Code sections and the Prosecutor's Office retains its supervisory functions. The Ministry of the Interior, KGB and SCC FID are still entitled to
take urgent preliminary investigation actions to subsequently provide all the findings to investigating officers.
Two arguments in favor of the Committee can be pointed out as most important. Firstly, the Committee is supposed to make investigation-related activities easier for the president to control and do away with the old protocols when four various departments performed investigative functions and the Prosecutor's Office exercised supervision. This "feudalization" of the security system did not help to reduce corruption and inevitably resulted in an interdepartmental competition which the Belarusian media called with reason "a war between security agencies."
Secondly, the new regulations are expected to eliminate the natural but wrong inclination to skip the preliminary investigation phase and to take individual cases straight to court. The new investigative agency is meant to raise the degree of independence, responsibility and performance of investigators and supervisors, and reduce the number of ungrounded criminal proceedings. According to the official statistics, the number of wrongfully accused (including those acquitted by the court) in the first six months of 2011 was up 50% year-on-year from 100 to 151 people1.
Centralization of the investigative branch can really ease the intense competition between security agencies and enhance the quality of preliminary investigation. However, the problems several security departments had to deal with before are likely to be encountered by the joint Investigative Committee considering that it is formed by the same people who are likely to flock together as a result of former affiliation.
Another internal management problem of the IC is that the officers will quite often investigate crimes committed by their former colleagues, which only increases the risk of corruption, especially at an early stage of the Committee's buildup. The management suggested resolving this intricate administrative problem with the help of two institutions: the formal institution of Committee's subordination to the president and informal institution of "righteousness" which Committee Chairman Valery Vakulchik and heads of regional divisions have been talking about. The future of these
Information from the report made by Leonid Maltsev, State Secretary of the Security Council of Belarus, at the meeting with the president on perfection of the preliminary investigation system: http://belta.by. Date of access: 02.08.2011.
institutions will be determined within 2012 (the term for adjustment set by President Lukashenko2).
Power elites after the reform
The reform enhances President Lukashenko's authority first of all by establishing his monopoly over criminal investigation in anticorruption cases. His eldest son Victor, Assistant to the President for Security, has gathered one of the most influential elite groups of security officials around him, which means that the Lukashenko family wields huge power, although the contours of the Victor and Alexander Lukashenko groups do not match.
Victor Lukashenko group
The Belarusian expert community usually refers to Victor Lukashenko's circle as a group primarily composed of former officers of the State Border Committee (SBC) and the Brest regional KGB office, including SBC Chairman Igor Rachkovsky, KGB chief Vadim Zaitsev, former head of the presidential Operative Analytical Center (OAC) Valery Vakulchik, and SCC FID Director Grigory Ver-emko. The history of this group is worth noting for its tidal influence in 2011 when the spurt in December 2010 through midsummer 2011 turned into a setback in the second half of the year with creation of the IC.
Involvement in the notorious case of the mass unrest of December 19, 2010 bolstered influence of the KGB which then gained ground during investigation of the bomb blast in the Minsk subway on April 11 and was even praised by the president for the quick uncovering of the crime. In February, the SCC FID addressed Lithuania and Poland requesting information about Ales Beliatsky's bank accounts that resulted in the arrest of the human rights activist in August and his conviction in November.
In April, the chiefs of the KGB and OAC, backed by Victor Lukashenko, informed the president of the results of the inspection of the State Border Committee, which entailed appointment of two new SBC vice chairs. Finally, in summer the OAC was given an exclusive right to give concurrence to investment projects in the field of telecommunications worth over USD 1 billion. All the events
See: Belorusskaya Niva:: http://www.belniva.by. Date of access: 10.01.2012.
and processes prove consolidation of the Victor group and demonstrate hard-driving political ambitions of its members.
However, reinforcement of the group slowed down in August when creation of the IC was publicly announced. Certain constraint became obvious after the terrorist attack on the subway station platform. The president ordered Assistant Prosecutor General Andrei Shved to head the interdepartmental investigative group which included Interior Minister Anatoly Kuleshov and KGB Chairman Vadim Zaitsev. In September, Alexander Konyuk, former chairman of the Belarusian Military Court and Vice Chairman of the Supreme Court, was appointed prosecutor general. He supervised creation of the IC together with State Secretary Maltsev. Both are not usually linked with the Victor group.
The mild sentence for Svetlana Baikova, former major case investigator of the State Prosecutor's Office, who was in charge of the high-profile corruption case of former SCC FID head Anatoly Gro-movich, and who was arrested on Zaitsev's order, also indicates that the group released hold to a certain extent. Valery Vakulchik's appointment as the IC chairman was a kind of a compromise solution: the president instructed him unofficially to focus on Committee's logistics, while Shved would be in charge of investigations3. Owing to the appointment of Igor Shunevich, former head of the KGB anti-corruption and organized crime unit, as the first deputy minister of the interior, the Victor group managed to secure a footing in the police ministry which is now seriously weakened by a number of discreditable resignations and Minister Kuleshov's inactivity. One of the assistant ministers, Evgeny Poluden, was arrested in December on bribe taking suspicion and another Assistant Minister Oleg Pekarsky was dismissed allegedly for discreditable conduct.
Alexander Lukashenko group
As a matter of fact, it is not very proper to speak about a certain clearly defined elite group when it comes to Alexander Lukashenko. The Belarusian president has been using disagreements between different influential groups to his best advantage trying to stay above-the-fray as an arbitrator and a kind of a platform for
From the report of the presidential press service; see: http://president. gov.by/. Date of access: 24.10.2011.
accommodation of interests. The Investigatory Committee is apparently meant to anchor his "natural" status institutionally as
he sees it.
Also notable is that creation of the Committee was announced on the same day when the Supreme Court passed sentence upon Baikova. It looks like the president offered a mutually acceptable solution for this long-lasting case, dangerous for security agencies as more than 30 people were involved in it including officers of the Customs Committee, SCC FID, and Brest regional KGB office. In November, the Belarusian Military Court acquitted most suspects in the Gromovich case of all charges that (alongside the personnel rearrangements in the IC and State Prosecutor's Office initiated by Alexander Lukashenko) show the president's intention to retain and consolidate his position as the center for accommodating interests of the elites keeping the "Victor group" away by creating a counterbalance using the Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of the Interior, the major suppliers of managerial personnel to the IC. This configuration of the power elites secures the president to the utmost.
Among other things in 2011, security agencies were largely involved in what they had not normally done before for it was out of their field of expertise that strengthened the president as well. Investigation of the bomb blast in the subway was used as an occasion for creating a semi-formal decision-making institution which the mass media later called the "club of security officials." Security agency chiefs and the president came together on a regular basis to address not only security matters, but also labor discipline at enterprises and domestic market protection. In June, they compiled a list of goods temporarily banned from export to countries outside the Customs Union or otherwise subject to export duties.
The regular sessions chaired by the president continued in 2012. Involvement of plainclothes officers in breaking up protest flash mobs in summer was also an initiative of President Lukashenko who earlier promised to "whack" the protestors4. This illegal measure — brutal and extremely dangerous for civil security — scared away many people from participating in network protest actions.
4 From BelTA reports: http://belta.by, June 14, 2011.
Conclusion
The preliminary investigation reform makes the interdepartmental competition between security agencies less stiff and, objectively, creates conditions for a higher quality of criminal investigation, which is supposed to have a healthy effect on the entire system of justice in the Republic of Belarus. As concerns the government administration system, the most significant effect of creation of the Investigative Committee will be the centralized investigation of corrupt practices and extension of President Lukashenko's influence. He will perform the function of a coordination center and guarantor of interests of the elites. At the same time, Lukashenko becomes a hostage of the situation when methods of force are used much more often to suppress dissidence alongside the black lists of persons subject to travel restrictions.
The most distinguishable and active group in the security agencies led by Victor Lukashenko will keep trying to compensate its declined power (partly lost due to delegation of investigative functions to the IC) in other areas. The KGB has already gathered momentum in protecting the political system in the broad sense of the word, for instance monitoring of election campaigns, prevention of social unrest in the industry sector and crackdown on the so-called revolution through social networks. The Financial Investigations Department is likely to maintain international cooperation in the field of economic intelligence (the Egmont Group). The Operative Analytical Center will engage deeper in the investment sector alongside the usual information intelligence.
