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Moscow police press charges of battery and hooliganism against footballers Mamaev, Kokorin

Two more individuals also faced the charges

MOSCOW, October 18. /TASS/. Moscow police have pressed charges of battery and hooliganism in regard to two Russian football players, Alexander Kokorin and Pavel Mamaev, a police source told TASS.

The source said that Kokorin and Mamaev as well as two other suspects have been charged with battery and hooliganism following their misbehavior earlier in the month in the Russian capital.

On October 8, these individuals were the perpetrators of the two assaults in downtown Moscow. The first incident took place at around 8:30 a.m. Moscow time, when several men attacked a driver of a Mercedes near the Peking Hotel in Moscow.

They beat the man up, in addition to breaking one of the vehicle’s windows and damaging one of the car’s doors, which belongs to Russian TV presenter Olga Ushakova. After that, the gang stopped in at a cafe on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street, where they proceeded to beat up a director of one of the Russian trade ministry’s departments, Denis Pak.

Both footballers assaulted the man hitting him over the head with a chair and then punching him in the face, inflicting multiple injuries. Sergey Gaisin, general director of the Russian State Research Centre NAMI, tried to calm the rowdy perpetrators down but was hit in his face.

The Moscow police have launched three criminal investigations into the matter, two of which are based on Article 116 of the Russian Criminal Code (Battery) with the other was launched directly against Kokorin and Mamaev based on the second part of Article 213 of the Russian Criminal Code (Conspiracy to commit hooliganism).

Moscow’s Tverskoy District Court ruled last Thursday to place them in pretrial custody for two months, until December 8.

This is not the first time that both Russian footballers were involved in public scandals. The most notorious one took place two years ago after the 2016 UEFA Euro Cup tournament in France. Mamaev and Kokorin allegedly shelled out 250,000 euros on champagne while partying in Monaco, just as the European championship was still on, but their national team was knocked out.

While Kokorin and Mamaev were partying at the ritzy Twiga club, they ordered some 500 bottles of Armand de Brignac champagne costing 500 euros each. According to eyewitnesses, the champagne was being served while the Russian national anthem was playing and the party was accompanied by a fireworks display.

The incident with Kokorin and Mamaev sparked a public outcry, especially following the national team’s poor performance in June at the 2016 UEFA Euro Cup in France, and both players later apologized for their behavior vowing that it would never happen again.