High-ranking officer of the Center for Special Purpose for Security, which is part of the structure Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia , for three years, collected secret data on the routes of the first persons of Russia through chats in WhatsApp. This was reported by the BBC citing two former and one current employees of the Center.
The tasks of the Center include prevention and control of road safety and at major international events, as well as escorting top officials. Among the objects that the special battalion accompanies are the president, prime minister, chairman and leadership Federation Council a>, FSB and foreign leaders.
As BBC writes, in 2016 the post of the Center’s commander was taken by police colonel Anatoly Makarenkov. According to a former employee of the Center – Senior Inspector Major Vasily Vetitnev and one of the retired officers who served in the special battalion, Makarenkov ordered the commanders of all eight platoons of the special battalion to collect secret data on the movements of the first persons. The colonel demanded to create a chat in WhatsApp and transfer there information from the code table about his location and movement of state security objects.
Vetitnev complained about this to the Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov in November. As it became known, he and other battalion employees were forced to transfer data, including under the threat of deprivation of annual bonuses in the amount of 100 thousand rubles. Many employees expressed dissatisfaction with this, but Makarenko ignored the complaints. Such workers were subjected to pressure, including psychological pressure, and also threatened to be fired. Vetitnev was removed from work, and two months later he was fired under the pretext of violations when working with classified information. The major is suing the Ministry of Internal Affairs at Moscow City Court , because he considers the order to dismiss illegal, and the dismissal itself binds with clear dissatisfaction with the order to transfer data about tuples via WhatsApp.