A former head of a precinct investigations unit of the Moscow police has been sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for fraud and large-scale bribe-taking.
Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky district court on September 30 handed down the sentence to Vyacheslav Pak, the former chief investigator of the Yakimanka precinct, after finding him guilty of accepting bribes in exchange for ending criminal investigations.
Pak was arrested in August 2017 when Federal Security Service agents found in his possession a packet of money from businessman Aleksandr Smirnov, who was facing a criminal investigation.
Pak was also charged with soliciting a 600,000-ruble ($9,250) bribe from a local resident in exchange for closing a drug-related criminal investigation of the resident's son.
Pak denied the allegations.
After completing his prison term, Pak will be ineligible for law enforcement work for an additional five years.
