MOSCOW. March 18 (Interfax) - The Moscow City Court has sentenced Alexander Drymanov, former head of the Russian Investigative Committee's department for Moscow, to 12 years in a high-security penitentiary for bribery, an Interfax correspondent reported.
"The court resolved that Drymanov shall be sentenced to 12 years in a high-security penitentiary," Judge Sergei Gruzdev said in handing down the sentence.
The court also fined Drymanov 196 million rubles, stripped him of his rank as justice major general, and forbid him to serve in government agencies for seven years.
The same court also sentenced another defendant in the case, Mikhail Maksimenko, former chief of the Investigative Committee interagency cooperation and internal security directorate, to 14 years in a high-security penitentiary, fined him 250 million rubles, and forbid him to serve in law enforcement agencies for six years. This sentence takes into account Maksimenko's previous bribery conviction.
One more defendant in the case, Alexei Kramarenko, former head of a division at the Investigative Committee's department for Moscow, has been sentenced to ten years in a high-security penitentiary, fined 195 million rubles, and forbidden to occupy government positions for five years. The court also stripped him of his rank as justice colonel.
The former Investigative Committee officials have been found guilty of accepting an especially large bribe. Drymanov has also been found guilty of accepting a major bribe.
The defense for the former investigation officials is determined to appeal the sentence.
The investigation had found that Drymanov, his first deputy Denis Nikandrov, Maksimenko and Kramarenko had received a bribe passed to them via businessman Dmitry Smychkovsky for requalifying the charges brought against Andrei Kochuikov (known in the criminal world as The Italian), an associate of criminal boss Zakhary Kalashov (known as Shakro the Young), so that he could be freed from pretrial detention. Kochuikov was detained following a shootout near the restaurant Elements on Rochdelskaya Street in Moscow in December 2015.
The investigation determined that the bribe amounted in aggregate to $1 million.
In addition, Nikandrov, who had concluded a pretrial plea agreement with the investigation, told investigators that he had handed 9,000 euros to Drymanov in 2016 for his patronage.
None of the defendants pled guilty either during the investigation or in court.
Maksimenko was detained in July 2016. The Moscow City Court ruled on April 20, 2018 to find Maksimenko guilty of accepting two bribes (one of them amounting to $500,000 from businessman Oleg Sheikhametov also in exchange for some actions in favor of Kochuikov) and sentence him to 13 years in a high-security penitentiary and fine him 165 million rubles. The court also deprived him of his rank as justice colonel.
Kramarenko was detained in December 2017 and Drymanov in July 2018.
Nikandrov was apprehended along with Maksimenko in summer 2016. The Moscow City Court ruled on August 16, 2018 to sentence him to five years and six months in a high-security penitentiary and to strip him of his rank as justice major general for accepting a bribe via Smychkovsky in exchange for helping Kochuikov.
The Russian Supreme Court later requalified Nikandrov's crime from especially grave to grave and ordered that he be transferred from a high-security to a general security penitentiary. This ruling entitled him to ask for parole, which he was granted last year.