“She ran into the toilet”: the judge was brought a bribe to the restroom

The trial of the minister of Themis from Lytkarino began

The trial of the former judge from Lytkarino near Moscow, Sergei Kotov, has begun in the Moscow Regional Court. He is on trial for accepting a multi-million dollar bribe. According to investigators, on January 11, 2021, Kotov and lawyer Irina Kuvakina met in the judge’s office to discuss the details of the criminal tranche. Some time later, in the toilet on the first floor of the court building, a package with money was handed over, after which Sergey Kotov was detained by the FSB officers.

As the MK reporter reported, at today’s court session, the prosecutor voiced one of the telephone conversations, in which details of Kuvakina’s possible requests to Kotov were heard. For the fulfillment of these requests, the servant of Themis was supposed, according to the prosecution, a large reward of 14.4 million rubles.

From this telephone conversation, it becomes clear that in 2020-2021 one of Kuvakina’s clients was a defendant in a case related to arms trafficking, drugs and interaction with organized crime groups. He was threatened with a serious term – 14 years. One of the interlocutors said that the term could be reduced – if “the organized criminal group was removed from the case” and one of the interrogations of the defendant Kurakina was recognized as inadmissible evidence, and that an agreement on this with the judge had already been established. At the same time, the emphasis was on the fact that “the prosecutor’s office agrees to any guilty verdict, so long as the case does not go to the DOS (additional investigation)”. Curious formulations were heard along the lines of “there are a lot of mistakes in the case, I hold the prosecutor’s office by the balls.”

Kuvakina was detained when she received money from a friend of her client. She agreed to cooperate with the investigation, law enforcement officers supplied her with counterfeit money – as a result, she brought 50 thousand rubles and millions of banknotes-dummy banknotes to a meeting with Kotov.

The chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, petitioned the VSSK to prosecute a judge suspected of bribery on an especially large scale. Kotov himself, speaking before the collegium, stated that he did not receive any bribe and did not demand money from the lawyer – according to him, at the time of their meeting, the judicial investigation in the case of Kuvakina’s client had already been completed, moreover, Kotov even prepared a draft verdict. Speaking to the VSSK, Kotov added that on January 11, Kuvakina ran into the toilet room where he was, and quickly – so that he did not have time to react – handed him a package “with small bills.” After that, the judge, according to him, immediately put the package on the windowsill, left the toilet, went to the chairman of the court in order to report on what had happened – and at that moment he was detained by the FSB officers. The former judge called Kuvakina’s actions a provocation.