President Boris Yeltsin added 1,000 people to the KGB's successor agency Wednesday and officially granted it the power to chase crooks, head off coups, search people's homes and fight terrorism.
The presidential press service said Yeltsin wanted to enable the year-old Federal Counterintelligence Service to "fight crime" better.The service has played a prominent role in a number of high-profile criminal investigations and already engages in most of the activities authorized by the decree.
The decree officially permits investigations in a wide range of areas,including terrorism, treason, common crime, espionage and illegal border crossings. It stops short, however, of publicly authorizing the 76,000-man agency to tap phones or read mail - activities for which the KGB was famous.
The service said Wednesday it was taking over investigations of seven Western spies unmasked by other Russian security agencies. It gave no details.
Yeltsin's decree is the latest in a string of strongly worded anti-crime measures by the president.
"Crime is one of the biggest threats to the political future of the president," said Eduard Ivanian, security expert at the Russian Institute for USA and Canada. "If he fails this battle, he will definitely lose the next elections."
Elections are scheduled for 1996. Yeltsin has not said if he'll run.
Yeltsin created the counterintelligence service in 1993 after disbanding the powerful Security Ministry, which he blamed for not warning him how dangerous his political opposition had become.