MOSCOW, June 6 (RIA Novosti) - Over a thousand bribery investigations were launched in the first three months of this year, a record figure for Russia, the chief investigator said on Friday.

Alexander Bastrykin, the chairman of the Investigation Committee at the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, delivered the figures at a corruption board meeting.

"In the first quarter of this year, the Investigation Committee opened over a thousand criminal probes into bribe taking, compared to only 2,067 for the whole of 2006," Bastrykin said.

The committee had a total of 75,000 criminal cases to investigate in January-March. The official said the number of corruption-related crimes being detected is on the rise in Russia.

"As much as 14,048 crimes of this category were recorded, which is 9.4% more than in the same period of last year," Bastrykin said.

He added that more than 33,000 corruption-related crimes have been reported since September, including around 16,000 this year.