Sochi police officers face tougher penalties in evidence falsification case

The Central District Court of Sochi has resentenced three former employees of the local police department's drug enforcement department. In addition to abuse of office and falsification of evidence, they were found guilty of accepting a bribe on an especially large scale.

As reported by Kavkazsky Knot, in December 2023, three former employees of the Sochi police department's drug enforcement department—Viktor Kazantsev, Andranik Avdzhiyan, and Stanislav Khramov—were sentenced to 4.5 to 5 years in prison for abuse of office and falsification of evidence.

During the first trial in the Central District Court of Sochi, the defendants were found guilty of abuse of office and falsification of evidence, but all three were acquitted of the bribery charge. After the verdict was overturned by a higher court, the case was sent back for a new trial by a different panel, the press service of the Krasnodar Krai courts reported today on Telegram.

According to investigators, on April 4, 2022, the defendants arrived on Vinogradnaya Street in Sochi, where they detained a young man. Without legal grounds or documentation, the police handcuffed him. Then, using information obtained from the detainee, they conducted an illegal search of the home of his acquaintance.

During a search of the man's residence, officers found a package containing drugs. They demanded a bribe of 1.5 million rubles in exchange for refusing to prosecute. To give the man time to collect the money, the police did not confiscate the drugs as required by law, but returned the package, suggesting he hide it in his jacket pocket. Having received only part of the demanded sum (130,000 rubles), they took the detainee to the station. There, a search report was drawn up, containing false information about the seizure of physical evidence that did not actually exist. Viktor Kazantsev, Andranik Avdzhiyan, and Stanislav Khramov were additionally found guilty by the court of accepting a bribe on an especially large scale. 1 Thus, each of the convicted men received a harsher sentence: Kazantsev will serve 12 years in a maximum-security penal colony, while Khramov and Avdzhiyan will each receive 10 years.

Furthermore, all three are required to pay a fine of three million rubles. They are also disqualified from holding positions in law enforcement agencies for 10 years and stripped of their special ranks, the court press service clarified.

"Caucasian Knot" also reported that in mid-April, a Moscow court placed former Krasnodar police officer Alexander Ablaev, accused of accepting bribes from journalists from the Telegram channel "Baza," under house arrest for six months.