MOSCOW. Jan 14 (Interfax) - A Moscow lawyer and an investigator have been accused of accepting a bribe amounting to 15 million rubles, a Russian Investigative Committee spokesman told Interfax on Tuesday.
"An investigator in charge of high-profile cases of the Main Investigative Department of the Interior Ministry's branch for Moscow, Alexander Sidorov, and a lawyer with the Moscow Chamber of Lawyers, Olga Arkhipova, have been detained on suspicion of accepting a bribe," he said.
The bribe was offered in exchange for the suspects' actions in favor of a person under fraud investigation.
An Interior Ministry spokesman earlier informed Interfax of the investigator's detention.
"As they accepted the bribe, the suspects were detained by detectives of the FSB [Federal Security Service] Internal Security Department. The money, mostly U.S. dollars, was confiscated. A measure of restraint will soon be imposed on the detained persons," the spokesman said.
A criminal inquiry has been opened on the counts of accepting a bribe (Article 290 of the Russian Penal Code) and bribery mediation (Article 291).
The inquiry will be handled by the Main Investigative Department, the spokesman said.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry's Moscow branch told Interfax on Tuesday that detectives of the Russian Interior Ministry's Internal Security Department and FSB officers had detained a Moscow investigator accused of extorting a bribe. Up to $500,000 was confiscated from him.
The detained investigator and his immediate superiors, among them the deputy head of the investigative department, will be dismissed from police, he said.