MOSCOW, June 27. /TASS/. The official representative of the Investigative Committee of Russia Vladimir Markin has confirmed that the governor of the Kirov region Nikita Belykh was detained at a Moscow restaurant when he was about to take the third part of a bribe worth 150,000 euros.
"It was really the third part of a bribe. He received 150,000 euros at this meeting," Markin said in an interview with Vesti FM radio station.
Markin said that investigators have no doubt that "this was a plain bribe". "There is no politics in it, a bribe is a bribe," he said.
"They steal like adults but make excuses like children. It seems that he had no time to invent anything, he said the first thing that came to his mind. He could have also said that he took the money to help pensioners and children," Markin said, adding that Belykh is an official and has no right to accept money.
The governor was detained in a Moscow restaurant on Friday. The Investigative Committee said he had received a bribe of 400,000 euros. Moscow’s Basmanny court arrested him for two months.
Belykh, 41, was appointed as Kirov region’s governor in December 2008 following the president's nomination. He was re-elected to the post in September 2014.