​Moscow investigator detained for BTC bribe of $24 million

What’s new? Marat Tambiev, head of the investigative department of the Investigative Committee for the Tverskoy district of Moscow, was accused of receiving a bribe in bitcoins worth almost $24 million (at the rate of January 30) from the hackers under investigation. The investigator stored access codes to the crypto wallet with 1032,1 BTC in a folder called “Pension,” where they were found by law enforcement officers who hacked his computer, Kommersant reports. On June 5, the Nikulinsky District Court of Moscow will consider a lawsuit filed by First Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Razinkin, who seeks confiscation of the corrupt proceeds.

Kommersant’s material

Details of the case. According to the investigation, Tambiev received the bribe on April 7, 2022, from members of the hacker group Infraud Organization Mark and Konstantin Bergmanov and Kirill Samokutyaevsky, whose criminal case he was pending. Tambiev took the bribe in exchange for not seizing the hackers’ assets. The bribe of 1032,1 BTC was a record for law enforcement officials in Russia. At the time of detection, the value of the cryptocurrency exceeded 1,6 billion Russian rubles (RUB).

In a folder on the computer, law enforcers found a photo of a piece of paper on which was written the seed phrase to access the Ledger Nano X hardware crypto wallet, where the bribe was stored. By the decision of the Basmanny court bitcoins were seized and transferred to the address of the electronic crypto wallet, controlled by the investigation, and the Ledger device was added to the case as evidence.

Tambiev, who had previously been fired for violating his oath and committing an act that discredited the honor of an investigator, denies his guilt of corruption. As for the hackers who provided the investigator with BTC, their criminal prosecution for the corruption offense was dropped.

Russia’s Ministry of Interior implements a tool to monitor crypto transactions

Employees of the agency have already been connected to the “Personal account of the law enforcement body”

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In July, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against an officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Mordovia for taking a bribe in bitcoins. The lieutenant colonel demanded 2 BTC (about 2,86 million RUB at the July 28 rate) from the suspect in exchange for information about operational search activities.

In April 2022, an officer of the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Khakassia was detained while trying to steal mining equipment worth 550 000 RUB. According to the investigation, he used operational information about the location of the crypto farm and engaged two local residents to steal the equipment.