In Samara, police officers were sent to a colony who, with the help of fake witnesses and buyers, falsified drug cases

The Sovetsky District Court of Samara found six police officers guilty of falsifying drug cases and sent them to a colony. This was reported by the Public Verdict Foundation.

Human rights activists call the trial “the largest case of drug planting” in Russia. The defendants were operatives of the anti-drug department in Samara police department No. 9.

According to investigators , in 2015-2017, police fabricated cases to increase statistics: they planted drugs and took detainees to the department, where they called local residents “from among drug addicts” who pretended to be buyers and witnesses.

The Investigative Committee noted that “some of the detainees actually had narcotic drugs on them or in their homes,” but in these cases the police also illegally confiscated them without witnesses or drawing up reports.

There are 17 victims in the case. Several of them said that the police beat them, demanding to admit guilt. Several victims were extorted money to stop the case. So, one of the detainees did not have 500 thousand rubles that the police demanded, and he gave them his Mazda 3 car .

Police officers Pavel Bormotov and Dinislam Kanyarov were sentenced to six years in prison, Boris Chernov to five years and six months in prison, Andrei Zlenko to five years in prison, Sergei Khranovsky to four years and three months, and Alexander Putyatin to four years in prison. All of them will serve their sentences in a general regime colony.

They were accused under articles of abuse of power with the use of violence, falsification of evidence and fraud (286, 303 and 159 of the Criminal Code). At the same time, the court recognized that the statute of limitations for prosecution under the article on falsification had expired.

“The verdict was announced over three days - from November 14 to 16. On the first day, during the hearing, the defendant police officers drank dark liquid from a Coke bottle, which they passed to each other, snacked on chocolate and periodically left the courtroom,” the Public Verdict describes the hearing.

Samara operatives used a network of fake buyers and witnesses. Journalists from “Important Stories” and “Novaya Gazeta” found 86 repeated names in Samara drug sentences. Two people, according to their calculations, acted as false witnesses or buyers about 40 times. Seven more - at least ten times.

Samara police officers were charged in the case with 15 fake buyers and witnesses (Article 303 of the Criminal Code). One of them died during the trial in the summer of 2021. As a result, out of 14 full-time witnesses, two were given suspended sentences, and the rest were released from punishment due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.