MOSCOW, (Reuters) – A former Russian policeman, who accused officers in his home town of corruption in blogs that had more than one million Internet hits, said on Tuesday he wanted to discuss the affair with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Major Alexei Dymovsky was fired after he posted two video clips on YouTube in which he appealed to Putin to rein in senior officers who he accused of pressuring subordinates to charge innocent people to meet statistical targets.
Unusually for Russia, where reports of high-level corruption and abuse of power rarely go public, Dymovsky’s accusations have become a highlight of print media and key state-controlled television channels.
“We have to serve the law, not the generals,” Dymovsky told a packed news conference in Moscow on Tuesday, Russia’s national day for its police forces. “I want to keep working and I want to achieve justice.”
He also complained of surveillance and efforts to stop him travelling to Moscow.
After the videos gained attention in media reports over the weekend, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev, responsible for the police, promised an inquiry into Dymovsky’s allegations.
Regional police were fast to report that their own investigation failed to back up Dymovsky’s charges.
Dymovsky, who worked in the criminal police force of the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, accused senior officers of forcing him to work at weekends and exerting undue pressure.
The major repeated the accusations in video clips posted on his website http://dymovskiy.ru and viewed more than one million times on YouTube, according to the site’s statistics.
