The legal teams of two former Interior Ministry employees once thought to be connected to an illegal gambling ring in the Moscow region have filed a motion to stop the investigation against their clients.
Lawyers for Farit Temirgaliyev and Mikhail Kulikov believe that the investigation was conducted illegally. Even though the initial decision to initiate the case on bribery charges was almost immediately cancelled by Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin, the Investigative Committee continued the inquiry, Kommersant reported.Temirgaliyev's lawyer Yelena Vyatkina said she filed a motion to the Investigative Committee based on the ruling of the Supreme Court that neither the criminal investigation nor the detention of the former law enforcement officers were legal because of Grin's cancellation.
In spring 2011 the Investigative Committee uncovered a massive network of underground casinos owned by businessman Ivan Nazarov and claimed that prosecutors were protecting them.Former Moscow region deputy prosecutor Alexander Ignatenko fled Russia after being accused of involvement in the case, but was released in July after being extradited from Poland earlier this year.
Meanwhile, other figures in the "gambling case," Nazarov and his accomplices Vladimir Khusnutdinov, Vladimir Naumkin, Marat Mamiyev, Alla Guseva and Ivan Volkov, have also decided to ask the authorities to dismiss their cases due to an amnesty.A Message from The Moscow Times:
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