MOSCOW, July 26. /TASS/. The Moscow City Court has sentenced Alexander Lamonov, Deputy Head of the Russian Investigative Committee’s Internal Security Department, to a five-year prison term for bribery, a TASS correspondent reported from the courtroom.
"The court hereby sentences Lamonov to a five-year prison term and a fine of 32 mln rubles ($507,000)," the judge said, adding that the defendant had been stripped of his rank of Colonel of Justice.
The criminal case was examined in a closed-door session due to the presence of classified information.
Lamonov vowed to challenge the court’s decision. "Yes, I will appeal against the verdict. As for release on parole, we shall see what will happen," he asserted.
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. Maximenko was sentenced to 13 years in a high-security prison.