The bitcoins were seized from a former investigator who accepted a bribe from a criminal organization in exchange for protection.
According to the TASS news agency, Russian authorities have begun liquidating 1,032.1 bitcoins confiscated from Marat Tambiev, a former chief investigator for the Russian Investigative Committee. Initially, Moscow will sell nearly $10 million worth of BTC.
The case unveils an elaborate corruption scheme that compromised Russia’s investigative institutions. Tambiev, who served as the chief investigator in Moscow’s Tver district, was found guilty of accepting a bitcoin bribe from the Infraud hacker group, which he was supposedly investigating. Tambiev helped divert police investigations into the group and allowed the hackers to hide cryptocurrency funds worth approximately $137 million.
The investigation revealed that the former investigator had made a deal with members of the criminal organization, accepting bitcoins in exchange for a promise not to seize their illegally obtained assets. The funds were discovered during a search of Tambiev’s apartment, where investigators found a Ledger Nano X hardware wallet containing the incriminating bitcoins.
In 2023, the Nikulinsky Court in Moscow sentenced Tambiev to 16 years in prison and fined him 500 million rubles (around $5 million). Along with being stripped of his rank, he was barred from holding public office for 12 years after his release.
The case also implicated other officials: Kristina Lyakhovenko, his former subordinate, was sentenced to 9 years in a penal colony for corruption, while Dmitry Gubin, a former deputy head of the Tverskoy district investigative department, remains at large.
The Prosecutor General’s Office has also filed an additional lawsuit to seize more of Tambiev’s assets, including a Honda motorcycle, real estate, and additional bitcoins, asserting they were acquired through illicit means.
