Brezhnev Son-in-Law Arrested on Charges of Accepting Bribes

Yuri M. Churbanov, the son-in-law of the late Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev, has been arrested on charges of taking bribes, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Tuesday.

The spokesman, Gennady I. Gerasimov, disclosed the arrest in response to a question at a regular news briefing. He said he does not know when or where Churbanov was taken into custody or where he is being held. He added that a judicial investigation is under way.

Churbanov’s arrest appeared to be in line with a crackdown on corruption under Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. At last week’s meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee, Gorbachev spoke out strongly against the moral decay that flourished in the last years under Brezhnev, who died in November, 1982.

Was Demoted in 1984

Churbanov, 50, a former first deputy interior minister, was dismissed in December, 1984, and given a minor post in the ministry.

Earlier, his wife, Galina, Brezhnev’s only daughter, had been linked to a diamond-smuggling scandal involving the former director of the Moscow Circus, Anatoly Kovelatov.

Gorbachev, in his speech to the Central Committee last week, said, “We cannot overlook the just indignation of working people at the conduct of those senior officials . . . who were called upon to stand guard over the interests of the state and of those citizens who themselves abused their authority, suppressed criticism, sought gain and some of whom even became accomplices in, if not organizers of, criminal activities.”

He made it clear that he thought Brezhnev and his associates created an atmosphere of permissiveness that allowed corruption to flourish.

Assigned as Bodyguard

Churbanov first met Galina Brezhnev, 10 years his senior, when he was assigned as her bodyguard. The tall, handsome Churbanov became her third husband, rising quickly in rank from lieutenant colonel to general in the Interior Ministry. He became first deputy minister in 1980 at the relatively youthful age of 43 despite his lack of experience in law enforcement.

Churbanov’s patron was the interior minister, Gen. Nikolai A. Shchelokov, who was dismissed from the Cabinet not long after Brezhnev’s death.

Two years later, after being stripped of his general’s rank and expelled from the Communist Party Central Committee, Shchelokov was found dead, reportedly by his own hand, while awaiting trial on corruption charges.