MOSCOW, August 16. /TASS/. The Moscow City Court has sentenced former First Deputy Head of the Russian Investigative Committee’s Moscow Directorate Denis Nikandrov to 5.5 years in prison for bribery, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom.

"The court hereby finds Nikandrov guilty and sentences him to five years and six months in a high-security prison," the judge pronounced the verdict. The court stripped Nikandrov of his rank of Major General of Justice but imposed no fine on him.

The criminal case was examined in a closed-door session due to the presence of classified information. During the arguments, the prosecutor asked to sentence Nikandrov to 5.5 years behind bars and impose a fine of 65 mln rubles ($979,000) on him.

Nikandrov’s defense attorneys said they would challenge the court’s decision. "Yes, we will appeal against the verdict," lawyer Sergei Kapustin said.

Case against high-ranking investigators

In July 2016, FSB officers arrested Mikhail Maximenko, Head of the Internal Security Department at the Russian Investigative Committee, his deputy Alexander Lamonov and First Deputy Head of the Russian Investigative Committee’s Moscow Directorate Denis Nikandrov. They were charged under Part 6 of Section 290 of Russia’s Criminal Code ("Large-Scale Bribe Taking by an Official or a Group of Persons through Collusion").

Pursuant to the case files, they entered into a criminal conspiracy with crime boss Zakhariy Kalashov (nicknamed Young Shakro) and took a $500,000 bribe for downgrading accusations to more lenient charges, and subsequently releasing crime boss Andrei Kochuikov (nicknamed the Italian), one of the participants in the shootout near a restaurant in downtown Moscow.

The case files of Nikandrov and Lamonov were detached into separate proceedings because they came clean and pled guilty, agreeing to cooperate with investigators.