 | Alexander Lamonov, a top crime-fighting official in Moscow has been sentenced to five years in jail for accepting a bribe from one of Russia’s most notorious mafia bosses in a case that has brought down several senior investigators. The deputy head of security at Moscow’s branch of the Investigative Committee was arrested alongside three of his superiors implicated in corruption in 2016. His boss was sentenced to 13 years this spring for receiving a $500,000 bribe from a crime lord. Lamonov was sentenced to five years in a maximum-security prison and ordered to pay a fine of $500,000. |  Alexander Bastrykin |
 Crime boss Shakro Molodoi | Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the powerful Investigative Committee and one of Russia’s top law enforcement officers, will step down from his post soon after parliamentary elections. In 2007, President Vladimir Putin established the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General's Office, de facto independent from the Prosecutor General's Office, and Bastrykin became its first chairman. The branch’s head of security, Mikhail Maksimenko, was also arrested on corruption charges. Bastrykin condemned the arrested officials as “betrayers.” |  |
