(Recasts, adds details)
MOSCOW, May 12 (RIA Novosti) - Several high-ranking officials were sacked and discharged from active service on Friday in an apparent major anti-corruption shake-up initiated by the Russian president.
Vladimir Putin fired a number of senior security officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov dismissed high-ranking officials from the Federal Customs Service as investigators opened a major probe into corruption.
Major General Ye.A. Kolesnikov was dismissed from his post and discharged from active service. He had been the first deputy head of the investigation directorate with the FSB's department for defending constitutional order and the fight against terrorism.
Major General A.P. Plotnikov, who was a deputy head in the same department, was also sacked.
Lieutenant General S.I. Fomenko, the deputy head of the service and the head of the agency overseeing the campaign against smuggling and drugs with the FSB's economic security service was also fired.
Following Putin's decision Thursday to transfer the Federal Customs Service from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry to the government's direct control, Fradkov fired Friday two deputy heads, Yury Azarov and Leonid Lozbenko.
The prime minister also appointed as the service's new head Andrei Belyaninov, a former KGB officer and previous head of Rosoboronexport, the country's main arms exporter. Since 2004 he had been head of the federal agency overseeing the national defense order.
Putin said in his state of the nation address Wednesday that anti-corruption efforts would be intensified and investigators said today that they had opened 20 probes into the economics ministry and customs services, one of which concerned the incorrect issue of licenses for meat imports that cost the state 27 million euros ($35 million).
"High-ranking customs officials have been identified as using their positions to help create conditions for the organization of contraband channels in the interests of unscrupulous businessmen involved in foreign trade," a source close to investigation told RIA Novosti.
In addition, the prosecutor general sacked M.E. Nikonov, Moscow's first deputy prosecutor and D.A. Polishchuk, first deputy head of the Prosecutor General Office's directorate for control over procedural actions.
