ABSTRACT
In February 2005 the newspaper Moskovskii Komsomolets published a series of sensational articles entitled “Brigade-2”. 1 The journalists laid out the stories of the so-called “Werewolves in Epaulets” – six officers from the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department and their companion General Vladimir Ganeev, the Head of the Security Department at the Emergency Response Ministry. Two thousand pages of evidence detailed an extensive network of criminal activities. The “werewolves” controlled a large business empire, which brought in almost $1 million per month via dozens of enterprises, casinos, and restaurants registered in their relatives’ and friends’ names. They also collected large sums of protection money. The officers frequently fabricated criminal cases, planting false evidence such as drugs or arms on innocent victims. Moreover, they “fruitfully cooperated” with organized crime. Some members of the “Brigade” created their own gangs, provoked them to commit crimes, and then gave the information to “brave policemen,” who were subsequently able to show good statistical evidence of their effective work. After the publication of the expose, police officials did their best to show that it was a “horrible,” but exceptional, case that revealed nothing about the overall law-enforcement system. They argued that the case represented a “cancerous growth inside the otherwise valiant police.” Erstwhile friends of the “Brigade” members immediately forgot them and said that “these people should be forever disgraced.”
