Chaika denies 'war' between prosecutors, investigators
Interfax | April 27, 2011 | JRL 2011-75-6 | JRL Home
MOSCOW. April 27 (Interfax) - There is no "war over compromising material" between the Russian Prosecutor General's Office and the Investigative Committee, said Prosecutor General Yury Chaika.
"We have no 'war over compromising material' with the Investigative Committee. Basically, the Investigative Committee was born out of the prosecutor's general office. It is like a mother for the Investigative Committee, and we are treating it with care," Chaika said on Wednesday, responding to questions after his annual report at the Federation Council.
"If there are certain problems [in the relations between the Prosecutor General's Office and the Investigative Committee], it would be over the balance of power," he said. "That is primarily your fault, lawmakers," Chaika said.
"There is a need for the balance of power, and if there is no balance, frictions arise. But I will tell you that in principle frictions do get solved without turning into something else, because we are doing the same work," the prosecutor general said.
As for the so-called 'compromising material' distributed by the media recently, Chaika said: "It has now become fashionable to smear everyone. Not just us - myself and Bastrykin. Today everyone with a more or less high profile is being smeared. Let those responsible for this be judged," he said.
Back in the 1990s, when Chaika was first deputy prosecutor general, people whom he sacked for discrediting the profession and taking bribes blackmailed and threatened him to force him to change the dismissal wording and reinstate them. There is no place for such people in the prosecution authorities, he said
One should be critical of all kinds of publications, he said. "I am taking it calmly. Of course, it is unnerving when they touch the family and so on. That is probably the last thing, when they touch the children and so on," Chaika said.
"My conscience is clean, and so is Bastrykin's because we are doing the work. We are doing the work entrusted to us by the Russian president," the prosecutor general said.
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