MOSCOW, April 22 (RAPSI) – The Moscow Garrison Military Court on Thursday sentenced reserve lieutenant colonel of the Federal Security Service (FSB) Kirill Cherkalin, who had pled guilty to taking bribes, to 7 years in high-security prison, RAPSI reports from the courtroom.
The court found him guilty of receiving bribes on a large scale and large-scale fraud. In addition to the prison term the man was also banned from holding law enforcement posts for3 years, deprived of his colonel rank and second-class medal of the Order of Merit for the Motherland.
Victims in this case count Sergey Glyadelkin and his cousin Igor Tkach sought to recover about 19.4 billion rubles from the defendant. However, the court granted their civil claims in part and collected 318 million rubles in favor of each victim.
Earlier, Prosecutor Milana Digayeva demanded 11 years behind bars and a 34 million-ruble fine for Cherkalin.
The case was heard under a special procedure, without examination of evidence and interrogation of witnesses, as the defendant had signed a plea deal with investigators. Cherkalin admitted receipt of a bribe in the amount of $850,000 from a businessman for the common protection.
According to the website of the financial crimes agency Rosfinmonitoring, Cherkalin represented FSB in the Interdepartmental Anti-money laundering Commission. Investigators believe that his illegal activity lasted from November 2013 to February 2015.
Questions to experts
In the meantime, lawyers from Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners believe the forensic examination conducted as to the the Yurpromconsulting company count of the case is faithless and turned to Russia’s Investigative Committee and Prosecutor General’s Office seeking the check to check investigators’ actions for several crimes including tampering with evidence and results of law enforcement intelligence operations (Article 303 of the Russian Criminal Code), abuse of power (Article 285), illegal institution of a criminal case (Article 299, Part 3), accessory in money laundering (Article 33, Part 5 and Article 174.1).
Asset seizure
In November 2019, Moscow’s Golovinsky District Court forfeited to the state assets of Cherkalin and his family worth over 6 billion rubles (about $80 million at the current exchange rate), including four apartments, two cottages, six land plots with a total area of 7,116 square meters, 14 nonresidential premises, 2 cars, 800 million rubles, $72 million and over 8 million euros found during the investigative activities in Cherkalin’s premises.
