MOSCOW, July 16 (RAPSI) – Moscow’s Izmailovsky District Court has passed a 2-year prison sentence on a former Interior Ministry’s colonel Pavel Kurmelev for a 19 million-ruble fraud (about $270,000), the press service of the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office reports. 

According to the court records, Kurmelev acting along with his accomplices took a victim’s money in the amount of more than 19 million rubles. The criminals told the injured man that the money must be transferred to high-ranking officials of the Ministry’s Investigations Department as illegal reward for the closure of a fraud case against a commercial organization’s CEO. However, the accomplices were going to spend the money for their own purposes.

Later, they allegedly received $20,000, a part of the demanded amount totaling $1 million, from another victim for the closure of a case too, but Kurmelev was arrested when receiving the money.

The former police official pleaded guilty and his case was considered separately. Investigation into other defendants is ongoing, according to prosecutors.