Post Card: Moscow Cops And Rubles

A soap opera about tax police may seem a stretch, but not in corruption-obsessed Russia

By Nick Holdsworth

Russia is fighting back against the national obsession with tax-dodging by bringing in the big guns: a TV soap opera about the work of the tax police.

In partnership with VideoArt, an independent Moscow-based TV advertising and production company that also co-produces the Russian version of "Sesame Street," the tax police are now working on a pilot 16-part series dramatizing the work, loves, hopes and fears of the job.

The elite, armed squad set up to tackle Russia's worst tax dodgers do a dangerous job in a country where the federal budget always falls short of trillions of tax rubles. Seven tax police, many of them former KGB officers, have died in the line of duty in the last year.

The series, called "Maroseika 12" after the address of the Moscow headquarters of the tax police, will start shooting on location this summer and should screen on RTR, Russia's second public channel, in December.

Drawing on some of the thousands of real-life cases successfully investigated in the past, VideoArt producer Yuri Sapronov said the $1 million-plus series financed by RTR and private investors, will be packed with sex, murder, money laundering, betrayal and explosive action.

"We won't be making a series about bureaucratic work -- it will be about crime, investigations and action," he said. "It's a series about people and the life we lead today. The two main heroes, tax police officers, will be a little bit romantic and optimistic. There must be light at the end of the tunnel."

The new series will be the first Russian TV police show to screen since Soviet times, when the hugely successful "Petrovka 38" dramatization of Moscow city cops regularly drew record numbers of viewers.

Producers of the new show have the enthusiastic endorsement of the tax police, which has cooperated fully with VideoArt but has not put any money into the project.

The series will include an episode about corrupt officers. But the tax police play down any notion that their force is plagued by rogue cops.

Last year, just 19 officers out of a force of 38,000 faced corruption charges, Nikolai Medvedev, chief spokesman for the tax police said, compared with 40 Russians who were charged with trying to bribe tax inspectors. Hundreds of threats, blackmail attempts and cases of abuse against tax police were recorded each year, he added.

The new series will air too late to remind Russians of their duty to file tax returns, however. The deadline is Wednesday and a campaign of TV advertisements, roadside billboards and newspapers ads is being used to try to bring reluctant Russians to heel.

"We are very enthusiastic about this television series," said Nikolai Medvedev, chief spokesman for the tax police. "The work of the tax police is still largely unknown -- people often confuse us with tax collectors. We want Russians to understand who the tax police are and hope it will encourage the idea that the law is the highest institution in life and victory of the law guarantees Russia's path to reform."