MOSCOW, July 1. /TASS/. Law enforcement agencies have detained four suspects in the kidnapping of an Italian citizen in Moscow’s city center.
"The first directorate for investigation of especially important cases (on crimes against individuals and public security) of the Moscow Investigative Committee is examining a criminal case against four accomplices aged between 21 and 36 years old. They are accused of kidnapping a person," the press service of the capital's Investigative Committee told journalists.
According to the investigation, on June 28, the suspects, being near a residential building on Sadovaya-Triumfalnaya Street, attacked an Italian citizen, who also has Russian citizenship, using a gun. They dragged him into a car, handcuffed him and put a bag over his head. The defendants then drove to the city of Bryansk, where they held the victim in a prearranged room for one day.
In turn, official representative of the Russian Interior Ministry Irina Volk noted that the police was told by an employee of the Russian representative office of an Italian company that her employer had been out of reach. She also noted that the kidnappers kept the victim in a private house in Bryansk, where during the search a pistol was seized and sent for examination.
"It has been established that the kidnapped man had a conflict with a commercial competitor shortly before the incident. Owing to good work done by investigators of the capital's [subdivision] of the Investigative Committee and undercover police officers, the whereabouts of the perpetrators were established, they were detained, and the victim was released. An investigation has been launched into the accomplices, they have been charged," the Investigative Committee said. The agency noted that the investigation "in the near future intends to petition the Zamoskvoretsky district court of Moscow to elect a measure of restraint in the form of detention for the accused."