MOSCOW. Aug 9 (Interfax) - The activities of a criminal community suspected of stealing cargo from trains at the Rzhevskaya Station have been halted, and 35 people have been detained, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said.
"Forty searches were conducted in the Tver region on August 7. As a result, 35 suspects were detained, including 21 red-handed at the scene of the crime," the FSB's press service told Interfax on Wednesday.
The FSB carried out the operation jointly with the Investigative Committee, it said.
The measures helped "suppress the unlawful activities of an organized criminal community, which systematically stole cargo in very large quantities from trains transiting the Rzhevskaya Station of the Oktyabrskaya railroad [in the Tver region]," it said.
The Investigative Committee has opened a criminal inquiry on charges of establishing a criminal community and participating in it and theft.
Investigative Committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko told Interfax that some of the detained have already given confessions.
"More than 40 searches have been carried out, in the course of which stolen property and money have been found and seized. In the near future, the investigation will ask the court to remand the suspects in custody as a restraining measure," she said.
According to the Investigative Committee, between February and August 2018, "the community's members, acting with the help of railroad employees, randomly stopped trains, opened containers, and stole different goods from them. They used trucks to transport [the stolen merchandise] to temporary storage sites in Rzhev for the purpose of subsequently selling them."