At least 10 high-ranking officers of the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption under the President of Tajikistan have been arrested in Dushanbe.  Among them is Firouz Kholmurodov, the chief the Investigative Directorate of the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption.

The arrested officers face charges of document forgery and abuse of power.

Meanwhile, the anticorruption agency has disavowed those officers saying that they had already been sacked.      

Sources at the Prosecutor-General’s Office and the anticorruption agency say a joint operation of the country’s special services has been going on for already a week.

Warrants for the arrest of the officers were reportedly issued on April 24.

It is to be noted that the initial list of the arrested officers contained names of two other anticorruption officers but they were later removed from the list.  However, they are not available yet by phone. 

The anticorruption agency was created by president’s decree of January 10, 2007.  It performs functions previously carried out by the State Financial Control Committee, Main Tax Police Directorate, Directorate for Combating Corruption and other agencies.

The agency is placed under president’s direct supervision, and it has staff of 450.

Tajikistan ranked joint 136th out 165 countries in Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perceptions Index — the same as Nigeria and 17 position below Russia.

Tajikistan signed up to the United Nations Convention against Corruption in 2006 and an anticorruption strategy for 2013-2020 was adopted in 2012.

Meanwhile, a new report by Transparency International, The Global Corruption Barometer 2016, says that nearly a third of public service users in the CIS nations reportedly paid a bribe (30 per cent) in 2015 and bribery is highest in Tajikistan where this rises to 50 percent of service users.