US, RUSSIA DISCUSS PRACTICAL STEPS AGAINST ORGANIZED CRIME.

On a working visit to Moscow, US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Gelbard, told Russia’s internal affairs minister Anatoly Kulikov that the two countries must intensify cooperation against organized crime networks and drug syndicates, including those operating from the territory of the former Soviet Union. Gelbard and Kulikov also discussed the activity of Russian organized crime in the United States, including the case of one Russian crime chieftain, Vyacheslav Ivankov, who is due to stand trial in New York. (10) In the last few months, US law enforcement agencies, with assistance from Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry, have arrested several dozen persons from the Russian criminal underworld on US territory. Ivankov, known as "the Jap," was arrested this June by the FBI on charges of extortion, racketeering, and international drug-trafficking. This and other cases, however, have come to a standstill because of substantive and procedural differences among the two countries’ criminal codes.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Russian Federation Sign Agreement.