Three police officers were convicted of abuse of power in Sochi.

The court in Sochi sentenced three police officers to real prison terms for not documenting a migration violation at the request of an official.

The case of police officers Nikolai Klimenko, Ruslan Khatkhohu, and Georgiy Karakyan was heard by the Adler District Court of Sochi. All three were charged with exceeding their official powers for personal gain (part 3 of article 286 of the Criminal Code of Russia provides for a prison term of three to ten years).

The court established that patrol officer Georgiy Karakyan, during an inspection of one of the car washes in Sochi in January 2025, discovered that a citizen of Tajikistan was working there. "His patent allowed him to work as a laborer, but in the Krasnodar region, there was a ban on foreign citizens with such patents working in the car wash sector for 2025," reported the unified press service of the courts of Kuban.

Karakyan brought the migrant to the department to document the violation, but platoon commander Nikolai Klimenko received a request over the phone from a "familiar representative of the authorities" not to hold the man administratively accountable.

The instruction not to draw up a protocol against the citizen of Tajikistan was conveyed by Klimenko to patrol officer Karakyan through the deputy commander of the company, Ruslan Khatkhohu. "As a result, the identified violation was never documented," the statement noted.

All three police officers denied the charges in court, stating that the version of the investigation and the prosecution "does not correspond to reality." The court imposed the same sentence on all three – three years and six months in a penal colony with a two-year ban on working in law enforcement and public service after release.

The press service added that Nikolai Klimenko and Ruslan Khatkhohu were taken into custody in the courtroom after the verdict; it is not specified whether Georgiy Karakyan was in custody before the verdict. The case of the official who asked the police not to document the migration violation is being investigated separately.

"Caucasian Knot" also reported that the Derbent City Court sent the platoon commander of the DPS battalion to a pre-trial detention center, accused of exceeding his official powers. According to the investigation, he unlawfully ordered the release of a detained driver who refused to present documents to the patrol officers.