Yeltsin Wages War Against Corruption : Crime: Special commission named to root out currency speculators, money launderers and smugglers in Russia.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin declared on Friday that organized crime is now “the No. 1 threat to Russia’s strategic interests” and outlined steps to break its corrupt hold on the government.

Speaking to law enforcement officers, Yeltsin and Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi admitted that currency speculators, money launderers, smugglers of raw materials, bribe takers and embezzlers pervade key ministries, bleeding the treasury of billions of dollars and jeopardizing Russia’s transition to a free-market economy.

“Corruption in the organs of power and administration is literally corroding the state body of Russia from top to bottom,” Yeltsin said. “The Mafiosi are getting hold of huge state resources.”

He appointed Rutskoi, an army general and Afghan war veteran, to head a special anti-crime commission of Russia’s Security Council that will employ military intelligence and expertise. The two men announced measures to put virtually all executive and legislative spending decisions under scrutiny by criminal investigators answerable to the president.

Yeltsin said the commission “is vested with all the necessary powers . . . to get to anyone who steals or takes bribes. It will tend to its business without any political chicanery or fancy reports. We need real disclosures of crimes. We need show trials.”

The president spoke at a special Kremlin conference on crime, a topic that has grabbed his attention in recent weeks. Last month, he declared that Russia, which under Communist rule achieved at least a sense of order and predictability, has lately gained notoriety as a world “Mafia power.”

The term “Mafia” is used here loosely for the criminal bands that have flourished since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Just about everything once owned by the state is up for sale, and much of it is pilfered by networks of businessmen and former Communist Party members still entrenched in the bureaucracy.

Security officials have investigated 4,000 “criminal gangs” this year, Rutskoi said, and found at least half of them to have “corrupt connections” with the state. According to statistics published this week, about 3,000 people allegedly involved in organized crime were arrested last year and another 1,500 government functionaries were held on corruption charges.

Russia recorded 23,000 murders last year, up 42% from 1991 to a rate exceeding that of the United States. Police also seized 4,500 illegal weapons and three tons of narcotics worth about $5 million.

Yeltsin said Defense Ministry officials were stealing entire ammunition depots. In a stepped-up search, police armed with automatic weapons have stopped more than 200,000 cars in Moscow this week and confiscated 260 unregistered guns, officials said.

Many Russians have begun arming themselves in self-defense. In a recent survey of 1,000 Muscovites by the Mnenia polling organization, 52% said they had or intended to obtain gas spray containers or gas pistols, and 22% said they had or wanted lethal firearms.

On Friday, the government moved to regulate the sale of gas pistols, as it already does with firearms, by restricting licenses to people without criminal records, 18 and older, who have passed a safety test. Last month, it was announced that army soldiers will soon help the police patrol Moscow’s streets.

While acknowledging that citizens feel increasingly threatened by violence, Yeltsin and Rutskoi expressed far greater concern Friday about white-collar crime. Yeltsin singled out “crude mistakes” of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Foreign Trade.

Investigators found a $2-billion gap between the ministry’s real turnover and its balance sheets for the first nine months of 1992, Yeltsin said. He asked in his speech where the money had gone. “Which foreign banks is the money working for?” he asked. “Who in the government profits from this lawlessness? We, meanwhile, are chasing pickpockets.”

Yeltsin accused the Central Bank of deliberately undermining the ruble, making Russian precious metals cheaper in foreign currency and giving smugglers incentive to sell them illegally abroad for huge profits.

Rutskoi said the “illegal flow of money” from Russia over the past year was $17 billion, one-fourth of its declared export earnings.

The anti-crime effort that he will supervise includes setting up a single export and currency control agency, tightening Russia’s vague legislation against economic crime, raising benefits for law enforcement workers and subjecting various security agencies to a presidential watchdog group.

These measures are likely to meet resistance in the Supreme Soviet, Russia’s conservative legislature, because they would concentrate presidential power and focus attention on corrupt lawmakers who resist Yeltsin’s free-market reforms.