ABSTRACT
On December 6, 1995 Russian President Boris Yeltsin rejected a new Criminal Code and a law that would enact it. Yeltsin expressed surprise at the absence of a number of crimes from the Criminal Code, including acts hindering journalists from the fulfillment of their legal professional duties. On November 28, ITAR-TASS reported that a total of 1.5 trillion rubles in revenues were appropriated by Russia's criminal groups in 1994 as a result of shadow deals, according to Aleksander Kartashev, the first deputy chief of the Russian Interior department for fighting organized crime. On December 21, Sovetskaya Rossiya reported that a scientific and practical conference on problems of countering organized crime had been held recently in Tver. The article summarized information presented at the conference with regards to different sectors of organized crime in Russia. According to the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] research institute, the entire territory of Russia is controlled by over 6,000 criminal groupings, the article stated.
