Official's Arrest In Russia Linked To GMU Research

MOSCOW -- A Russian police official conducting research under the auspices of Virginia's George Mason University has been arrested after he reported obtaining evidence incriminating influential figures in Moscow and the far eastern city of Vladivostok, colleagues and local authorities said this week.

Col. Alexander Astafyev, 50, a senior anti-corruption investigator affiliated with a GMU research center in Vladivostok, had been working on an academic paper about "raiding," or the criminal takeover of businesses with the help of corrupt officials, police or judges, when he was detained last month.

Local authorities charged him with abuse of office, alleging that he illegally accepted a gift of three air conditioners and a computer on behalf of the region's witness protection program, which he directed. But colleagues in Vladivostok and abroad have rallied to his defense, portraying the charges as trumped-up and Astafyev as a Russian rarity, an honest cop.

"If such a person will be imprisoned now, that means corruption has totally won in Russia," said Maria Solovienko, the editor of an independent newspaper in Vladivostok, adding that Astafyev was so scrupulous that he never earned enough to buy an apartment, despite a decorated, 33-year police career.

In a handwritten letter addressed to the interior minister, Astafyev said he had been framed by police and state security officials with ties to a criminal group he had been investigating. Solovienko posted the letter online and provided a second that Astafyev wrote from his jail cell to the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok.

"If you have any power, please persuade those you know to provide help, any help other than financial . . . because they can reach me here in prison just as they did with Trifonov and Larionov," he wrote, referring to local crime bosses who were killed in prison to prevent them from implicating others.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman confirmed receipt of the letter but declined to comment further.

Aurora Rimskaya, a spokeswoman for the Primorye Regional Investigative Committee, also declined to discuss Astafyev's case but said his allegations were untrue. "We can't say much about this because the investigation is still ongoing, but we believe there are signs of crime in Astafyev's actions," she said.

Astafyev worked closely with FBI agents investigating organized crime, and he visited Washington last year at the invitation of the State Department, said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at GMU, which operates research and training institutes in Vladivostok and three other Russian cities.

"I think it's very disturbing," she said of his arrest. "It's U.S.-Russia relations without the reset."

Shelley said Astafyev had a "long-standing reputation for integrity" and has been affiliated with the Vladivostok center for several years. He was conducting research on the criminal raiding of businesses under a $3,000 grant when he was arrested June 16, she said.

In a draft paper he submitted to the center, Astafyev estimated that 10,000 cases of criminal raiding occur every year but that fewer than 100 are prosecuted and result in convictions. "Law enforcement organs today are either participants or spectators of the takeovers," he wrote.