DUSHANBE, July 16, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- Two officers from the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption have been detained on suspicion of having taken bribes and criminal proceedings have been instituted against them, the anticorruption director Fattoh Saidov told a press conference in Dushanbe on Thursday.

According to him, the suspects are the chief of the investigation department within the Dushanbe anticorruption directorate and investigator with this department.

“The preliminary investigation has established that an officer from the police department in Dushanbe’s Shohmansour district was detained in May this year on suspicion of having been involved in corruption,” said Saidov, “They demanded 15,000 US dollars from him for re-qualifying his actions from one to another article of Penal Code, under which minimum punishment would be set for him.”