Vladimir Putin, who is currently attending an all-Russia coordinating session of law enforcement agency chiefs to discuss measures to counter corruption and crime, said the operation, named "Energy", was launched several years ago, but was not made public and has already helped the state to recoup billions of rubles.
The main goals of the operation are to prevent tax crimes committed by oil and gas companies, as well as economic and corruption crimes among federal, regional and local authorities.
In recent years Russia has witnessed several high-profile arrests and court hearings in cases connected to fuel and energy companies.
In the most famous of these, the founder and former head of the now bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested and sentenced to serve an eight-year prison term after being convicted of fraud in May 2005.
The company's debt to the Federal Tax Service is now estimated at 369.6 billion rubles ($13.7 billion).
Several other top Yukos officials have been arrested in various related cases.
In October the third largest crude producer in the country, Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP, paid out 30 billion rubles ($1.12 billion) in back taxes for 2002-2003, following the results of inspections conducted by the Federal Tax Service. The company now awaits the results of inspections for 2004 and 2005.
