MOSCOW. Aug 10 (Interfax) - Three Moscow policemen have been detained on charged of planting drugs on passengers of a car and extorting 300,000 rubles from them under a threat of criminal prosecution, Yulia Ivanova, the spokesperson for the Moscow branch of the Russian Investigative Committee, said.
"The criminal case against three employee of the Interior Ministry's branch for the Arbat district is being investigated. They are charged with abuse of power (Part 3 of Article 286 of the Russian Criminal Code) and a massive fraud through abuse of office (Part 3 of Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code)," Ivanova told Interfax on Monday.
According to the investigators, in late June 2020, the policemen pulled up a car near Arbatskaya Square while patrolling the territory and conducted an inspection of the men who were in it.
"While inspecting one of the men, [they] planted a bag with unidentified substance, which they subsequently passed off as a narcotic substance they found, in his backpack. When the aggrieved party started expressing their disagreement with the policemen's actions, they used their non-lethal weapons against the men they were inspecting and inflicted bodily harm on them," Ivanova said.
Following it, the patrol policemen demanded that the men hand them 300,000 rubles to be freed from criminal prosecution for illegal possession of drugs and "went to a closest ATM, where they received the aforementioned amount of money," she said.
"The aggrieved persons made a personal appointment with the investigative department of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee in Moscow. The three patrol policemen were shortly identified and detained," Ivanova said.
They pleaded guilty during the investigative actions, she said.
"At present, a restrictive measure in the form of house arrest has been imposed on them," Ivanova said.