Sentence with a smile on your face

On Friday, the Moscow City Court ruled on the scandalous case of journalist Ivan Golunov, who was planted with drugs in 2019 by five Moscow police officers.

They were found guilty of exceeding official powers, falsifying evidence and the results of operational-search activities, as well as illegal possession of drugs.

The sentence to the former employees of the Internal Affairs Directorate for the ZAO turned out to be noticeably softer than the state prosecution had expected, but all the defendants will still go to jail for a long time.

Igor Lyakhovets, who during his service in the police was the chief of the other defendants, received 12 years in a general regime colony instead of the 16 requested by the state prosecution.

Operatives Akbar Sergaliev, Maksim Umetbaev and Roman Feofanov received eight years in a general regime colony instead of the requested 12 years.

Denis Konovalov, the only one who made a confession during the investigation, received five general regime colonies instead of seven, on which the prosecutor's office insisted.

He was under house arrest and taken into custody in the courtroom.

In addition, the court satisfied Golunov's civil claims against the defendants and ordered to recover one million rubles from each of them.

The defendants' lawyers said they would appeal the verdict.

The meeting itself, which caused a great stir among the journalists, turned out to be very short-lived.

The defendants, after they were brought into the hall, were in a good mood, behaved relaxed, smiled and made signs of attention to the relatives who had come to the announcement of the verdict.

After the judge announced the sentences to them, the former police officers, visually maintaining their positive attitude and smiles, began to shout declarations of love to their loved ones.

  • AGN "Moscow"

  • © Andrey Nikerichev

"Thank you all"

After the announcement of the court's decision, the victim, journalist Ivan Golunov, expressed his attitude towards it.

He noted that he was completely satisfied with the sentence of the former policeman and would not appeal against it.

“I want to say thank you to everyone who wrote on social networks, told about my stories, went out with pickets.

Thank you all.

I promised to get justice.

We have completed the first stage, I hope that soon we will find out the results of the second stage, which concerns the customer of this crime, ”he said at the walls of the Moscow City Court to the assembled journalists. 

To the clarifying question, can he give the name of the customer now, Golunov replied that the competent authorities should do this.

Earlier, the journalist stated that his criminal prosecution was provoked by his investigation of high-ranking security officials associated with the funeral business in Moscow.

At the same time, let us remind you that according to the official version of the investigation, the crime did not have a customer.

The Investigative Committee considered that the defendants committed a violation of the law due to career motives - in order to increase the rates of solving criminal cases. 

  • Journalist Ivan Golunov

  • RIA News

  • © Vladimir Song

Public response

Investigative journalist Ivan Golunov was detained on June 6, 2019 in the center of Moscow by officers of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Moscow CJSC.

During a body search, a bag with drugs was found in his backpack, which, as the journalist said from the very beginning, the police had planted on him.

After conducting a search in Golunov's apartment on the same day, the police allegedly found several more bags and a package with a narcotic substance that turned out to be cocaine, as well as a packaging scale.

After that, a criminal case was opened against the journalist at the Department of Internal Affairs of the ZAO.

Around the detention and criminal prosecution of Golunov, a great public outcry immediately arose.

A number of media outlets and public figures expressed doubts about the journalist's guilt, but at first the police insisted that they were right, claiming that there was operational information about Golunov's involvement in the distribution of drugs in the capital, which he allegedly could have brought from Latvia. 

Already on June 8, State Duma Deputy Alexander Khinshtein, for the objectivity of the investigation, asked to transfer the criminal case to the Investigative Committee of Russia, but the prosecutor's office left him in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, entrusting the investigation to the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in Moscow.

Every day, the number of critical statements about law enforcement agencies in the Golunov case grew, and high-ranking officials expressed their doubts about the objectivity of the journalist's prosecution.

On June 10, the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Tatyana Moskalkova, reported about him to President Vladimir Putin.

The very next day, June 11, it turned out that there were no traces of Golunov's DNA on the items seized during the search in his house.

Hand washings and nail slices, as well as urine analysis, also did not reveal any traces of the journalist's contacts with narcotic substances.

On the same day, Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said in a special statement that due to the lack of evidence, the criminal case against the journalist was dropped, and he himself was released from house arrest. 

After some time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced that a number of violations were revealed in the actions of the police officers who detained Golunov, and soon after that they were brought to criminal responsibility.