An Employee Of One Of The Interior Ministry's Most Secretive Units Has Been Arrested In Moscow

Allegedly for a bribe.

An employee of one of the most classified divisions of the Russian Interior Ministry, the Bureau of Special Technical Measures (BSTM), has been arrested in the Russian capital.

According to "Kommersant", a criminal case against Anton Nesterov, a senior operative of the 4th department of the BSTM, is being investigated by the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for Moscow. The investigation accuses Nesterov of taking a bribe on a particularly large scale (part 6 of article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), as well as unauthorized access to computer information, which caused grave consequences (part 3 of article 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

Silovik was detained back in May. On August 12, the Moscow City Court is scheduled to consider the defense's appeal for another extension of the detention period. Previously, the courts have repeatedly rejected similar motions, citing materials confirming the validity of suspicions, as well as the risk that Nesterov, once at large, may abscond or put pressure on the participants of the investigation.

The details of the case remain classified, but according to Kommersant, the Investigative Committee believes that the operative not only received bribes, but also "committed crimes typical of hackers" - while he himself was supposed to fight cybercriminals.

This incident was not the first scandal surrounding the BSTM. In April 2024, the Investigative Committee charged in absentia another employee of the unit, Georgiy Satyukov, who served in the Interior Ministry's K Directorate. He was accused of receiving the largest bribe in the history of the Russian Interior Ministry - almost 5 billion rubles in cryptocurrency.

Before that, the most high-profile case was considered the investigation against former Interior Ministry Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, sentenced to 16 years for bribes worth 1.4 billion rubles. In the course of searches, property and cash worth about 9 billion rubles were seized from him.

According to the IC, Satyukov acted through an intermediary - former colleague Dmitry Sokolov. Both were put on the federal and international wanted list. The investigation claims that the cryptocurrency bribe was handed to them by Alexei Ivanov (also known as Bilyuchenko), the system administrator of crypto exchange WEX (World Exchange Services Pte. Ltd., formerly BTC-e). In return, the police allegedly provided "patronage".

Investigators believe that after receiving the cryptocurrency, the defendants fled abroad and laundered the money through real estate transactions, including the purchase of apartments in the famous 828-meter Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, Kommersant wrote.

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