A senior Interior Ministry official has been charged with aiding and abetting the killers of a Moscow lawyer in 2008, the Investigative Committee said.

Colonel Dmitry Maximov, who oversaw major cases in the ministry’s criminal investigation department, has been arrested and faces up to life in prison if convicted.

Maximov has maintained his innocence, Kommersant reported Friday, citing his lawyer Imanali Uzalov.

Lawyer Sergei Biryukov was gunned down Dec. 5, 2008, in a Moscow apartment that Maximov had set up as a safe house to hide witnesses and hold clandestine meetings. Maximov is suspected of accepting an order to kill Biryukov in spring 2008 and passing the order to taxi driver Miroslav Korsun together with a gun and the keys to the safe house apartment, Kommersant said, citing investigators. Korsun, in turn, is suspected of handing the order over to a prostitute, Olga Zaikina, who forwarded it to Maxim Makrovsky, a resident of the Kursk region who police believe carried out the killing.

Korsun, Makrovsky and Zaikina were detained shortly after the killing.

Maximov’s arrest deals a new blow to the country’s police force, which has grappled with a series of scandals including a Moscow policeman who killed three people in April and a policeman who appealed to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on YouTube last month.