The scientific article is dedicated to the research of the status and powers of an official of operating units and official and legal relations arising when enforcing the norms of law legislated in the Federal Law “On Operational Investigative Activities”. Objective: to perform the scientific research of the status and powers of an official of operating units; to analyze the legislation regulating this legal status, powers of the official of operating units. Methods. In the work, the authors used the formal, logical, sociological, historical, and dialectic methods. The scientific article is based upon the sociological, theoretical, and historical methods, on the knowledge technique of the legal status of an official, theory of powers, and the comparative analysis of the legislative regulations. The main methodological approach used in the scientific article is the criminal intelligence theory developed in the works by Russian lawyers. Main results: the research allowed revealing the advantages and disadvantages of the legislative and regulatory framework regulating the legal status and powers of an official of operating units and also the significant mistakes in the case law. Conclusion and grounding of the novelty of work: basing upon the analysis of the current Federal Law “On Operational Investigative Activities”, it can be concluded that officials can be logically subdivided into the main and derivative types according to their powers. The main types of officials are the following: 1) officials of operating units; 2) derivative positions – criminal intelligence investigator. A complex of federal laws and other statutes and regulations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation that legislate the concept of the official of operating units determine the structure and content of the legal status of an official; in general, it can be called legislation regulating the legal status of the officials. The novelty of the work is in the grounding of the new approach to the understanding of the legal status of officials of operating units and their powers; this approach is based upon the theory of legal status and the theory of operational and investigative activity. The criteria of the novelty are corresponded to: the authors’ understanding of the concept “official of operating units”; improvement of the characteristics of the legal nature and legal status of an “official of operating units”; evaluation of legal norms of the Federal Law “On Operational Investigative Activities”; recommendations of improvement of the Federal Law “On Operational Investigative Activities”; development of the methods of the legal status of an “official of operating units” aimed at creating a sequential algorithm for solving qualified tasks. The main objective of the research in this scientific article is the creation of a detailed and clear concept of an “official of operating units” and also revealing the main powers of these officials.