Shopping center employee accused of trying to sell police database

A criminal case is being investigated in Kazan regarding an attempt to sell a secret database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan containing information about criminals. Charges have been brought against the seller of the Kazan shopping center "Altyn" Danil Garayev. He admitted his guilt. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is looking into ways of information leakage, but assures that the data that Mr. Garayev took possession of was not “very important.”

Yesterday, Andrei Sheptytsky, assistant head of the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee for Tatarstan, told Kommersant that 23-year-old resident Danil Garayev was charged under Part 1 of Art. 137 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Illegal collection or dissemination of information about the private life of a person constituting his personal or family secret”). In accordance with this article, the suspect faces up to two years in prison. The case is being handled by the Investigative Department for Kazan. According to investigators, Mr. Garayev tried to sell the information database of the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs “Legend”. And right at his workplace - in the Kazan shopping center "Altyn" (specializing in sales of computer equipment, disks with programs, information, films) on Spartakovskaya Street, where he works as a salesman. According to the Investigation Department, the database contained information “about the private life of citizens of the Russian Federation, constituting personal and family secrets.”

The Legend database was introduced into the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan in 2000. This happened after, in the late 90s, in order to increase the efficiency of the police in the republic, they began to comprehensively automate the activities of the ministry’s structures. The database contains information about persons who have come to the attention of law enforcement agencies - repeat offenders, detained violators of public order and others. It unites all divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the republic.

According to investigators, on October 26 last year, Mr. Garayev offered to buy “Legend” from him to one of his clients for 10 thousand rubles. The client promised to think about it, and after leaving the shopping center, he reported Mr. Garayev’s proposal to the Tatarstan Ministry of Internal Affairs. Employees of the operational-search unit through the line of economic security joined the case. They carried out a so-called test purchase and caught Mr Garayev red-handed on the same day - after he received the money and handed over a computer hard drive with a recording of “Legends”. A criminal case was initiated against him. According to the Tatarstan prosecutor's office, the case is “legal and justified.”

According to Andrei Sheptytsky, the suspect “fully admitted his guilt,” and told the detectives that he “took the base from his friend.” Currently, according to the Investigative Committee, the investigation is taking measures “aimed at establishing all the circumstances of the incident.”

Yesterday, the head of the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan, Irina Nizhelskaya, told Kommersant that her ministry’s internal security department is finding out how the information leak could have occurred. She said that “this (leak.—Kommersant) happened for the first time,” and also assured that “the information that they tried to sell is a truncated version of the Legend, which does not contain any very important data.”

Andrey Smirnov

The seller got into “Legend”