Saturday, October 25, 2008

Russian Federal Tax Police














image source unknown

found here

This is a tax collection team from the FSNP, Russia's tax police. If you give the ordinary collectors the slip and they want you bad enough, these are the people they send looking for you. You think the IRS is bad? How would you like these guys barking down your snorkel?

Years ago, I saw another photo of one of these units in a magazine, but I couldn't locate it on the net. From what I remember the general composition of the team is an officer with clipboard and pistol, a big guy with a Stihl saw and as many submachine gun wielding goons as needed. The saw is used to cut through walls or around door frames.

Not much info on this bureau of the Russian government out there, but here's what I could find:

Russia's Tax Police Press Media Message: Pay Up (NYT, 1998)
Military school for Russia's child tax cadets (CNN, 2001)
Federal service of RF tax police (FSNP)
Russian language profile of FSNP (scroll down for loads of uniform/patch images)
Flag of federal bodies of tax police of the Russian Federation, 1997—2003

2 comments:

crow said...

If we had effective tax collectors like that here in America, we'd have a lot less tax cheats!

John M. said...

Probably not, and yet it still doesn't seem to stop the Russians!