A former senior police investigator and his subordinate have been jailed by a Moscow court in what is thought to be the largest bribery case in modern Russian history.
Marat Tambiev, a major in the Moscow district Investigative Committee, was involved in Russia’s crackdown on the local branch of the international cybercrime syndicate known as the Infraud Organization. He extorted the group, offering to sequester 14 billion rubles ($147 million) worth of cryptocurrency without handing it over to the authorities.
Tambiev has been sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security penal colony and fined 500 million rubles ($5.2 million) in what is considered the largest bribery case in modern Russian history. Tambiev’s former subordinate Kristina Lyakhovenko, received a nine-year sentence in a general-security penal colony.
The judge found Tambiev guilty of “taking a bribe on a particularly large scale” as well as abuse of authority, as reported by TASS news agency from inside the courtroom. Lyakhovenko was convicted of accepting a bribe, abusing her power, and falsifying evidence.
Both have denied any wrongdoing.
When asked by a journalist about his record as the largest bribe-taker, Tambiev quipped: ”If you're going to be something, then be the best!”
Four members of the cybercrime syndicate – who were all eventually sentenced to prison – offered Tambiev and Lyakhovenko roughly half of the criminal organization’s 14 billion ruble fund as a bribe. However, they reported the extortion to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), leading to Tambiev's arrest in 2022 and Lyakhovenko's arrest in September 2023.
Both Tambiev and Lyakhovenko have been stripped of their ranks and barred from serving in state authorities for 12 and eight years, respectively, following their release.
On Tuesday, the court ordered the recovery of 7.8 billion rubles ($80 million) from the defendants, along with an additional 277 million rubles from Tambiev in compensation for his crimes. Additionally, Tambiev was slapped with a 500 million ruble ($5.2 million) fine.
The Infraud Organization was created in 2010 by Ukrainian national Svyatoslav Bondarenko. The US Justice Department stated that the group had 10,901 registered members globally as of 2017 and described it as “one of the largest cyberfraud enterprises” ever prosecuted by the DOJ.
In 2018, US authorities charged 36 suspected members of the Infraud Organization for a wide range of criminal activities. The organization caused more than $530 million in actual losses to victims and aimed to take $2.2 billion, according to the DOJ.