Tver bandits were disarmed
Employees of the RUBOP of the Moscow region, together with their Tver colleagues, detained two bandits suspected of kidnapping. During a search in the house of one of them, an entire arsenal was found: a machine gun, a sawed-off rifle, a carbine, cartridges and 37 kg of explosives.

A month ago, a resident of Balashikha near Moscow placed an advertisement in a local newspaper about the sale of a garage. The next buyer, together with a friend, looked around the premises for a long time and was satisfied with everything. Finally, he wanted to look at the repair pit. Having gone downstairs, the buyers found some kind of imperfection and called the owner. As soon as he was in the pit, the guests pounced on him and began to beat him.
The bandits told the garage owner that they wanted to get several thousand dollars from him, locked him in the garage and left. When he woke up, he opened the door with a spare key and went straight to the police. Soon, detectives established that two residents of Tver came to him - Alexander Lazarev, who was repeatedly convicted (he spent 20 of his 42 years in prison) and Mikhail Sidorov. However, they were unable to detain the extortionists in hot pursuit - they managed to leave Balashikha.
They managed to find the bandits in the village of Nelidovo, Tver Region. Employees of the local Organized Crime Control Department got involved in the case. Together with colleagues from the Moscow region, they raided the house where Lazarev lived. The owner himself answered the knock on the door. The police immediately grabbed him and broke into the house. Sidorov was also detained here. Both completely denied their participation in extortion, and then the operatives began a search. According to the police, they did not particularly expect to find anything criminal. But they were lucky.
In the entryway there were several canvas bags, practically in plain sight. One contained a PPSh assault rifle from the Great Patriotic War, a sawn-off rifle and a carbine. From another, the investigator extracted 37 kg of TNT. “We found the weapon in the swamp when we were out picking mushrooms, and we were going to hand it over to the police,” said Lazarev, “and we were going to use TNT to kill the fish.”
However, operatives have a different opinion on this matter. They believe that Lazarev and Sidorov were engaged in excavations in places of military operations, and the weapons and explosives they found were sold to bandits. Apparently, these two ended up in Balashikha because they went to negotiate the sale of weapons to Moscow. And at the same time they went on tour: they followed an advertisement and tried to extort money from the owner of the garage.
So far, both Tver residents have been charged with unlawful imprisonment. In the near future they will also be charged with illegal possession of weapons and explosives.

OLEG KUTASOV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 153 dated 08.26.1999, p. 5

Themes:

The fight against banditry