MOSCOW, January 3. /TASS/. The head of the Interior Ministry in the Volga Republic of Mari El has shot himself in his office, a Russian Interior Ministry spokesman said on Saturday.

Mari El Interior Minister Vyacheslav Buchnev was on vacation from December 26 to January 8 but periodically appeared in his office, the spokesman said.

“Today he also came to his workplace and his secretary who was present heard a shot some time later in his office,” the spokesman said, adding an investigative team was working at the scene of the suicide.

Russia’s Interior Ministry has made a decision to send a special team from the ministry’s central office to learn all the circumstances of the suicide, the spokesman said.

A source in law-enforcement agencies told TASS the Interior Ministry had no claims to the Mari El interior head’s work.

Meanwhile, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee for Security and Corruption Fight Alexander Khinshtein told TASS a joint group of Russia’s Interior Ministry and Investigative Committee had launched a probe in the Republic of Mari El in December.