This work is an excellent example of an ongoing investigation. After all, while it is often difficult to put an end to a good journalistic investigation, to consider it fully completed, authors rarely have the opportunity or desire to delve into a worked-out topic again, to follow further events related to it. Not in this case.
Alesya Marokhovskaya, a journalist with IStories, tells us how it all began. A colleague from Meduza, Ivan Golunov, called her. Ivan, who once almost went to jail because of a police provocation, is naturally closely watching the trial of those who planted drugs on him. He noticed in the case a strange witness, with whom the cops were talking like an old acquaintance. And, going deeper into the case materials, he found out that all the witnesses and the cops really knew each other for years, and the witnesses were even paid. Moreover, reading other verdicts, IvanI realized that his situation is not unique. After that he asked Alesya, one of the few Russian journalists who had mastered programming for working with big data, to check how things were going with so called “staff” or rent‑a mob witnesses all over Moscow.
Marokhovskaya wrote a script that downloaded all the verdicts relating to the 12 drug abuse articles in the Criminal Code from the Moscow City Court’s website. It yielded 56,000 documents, from which another script was able to extract names and see which occur more often than in a single case. She designed a table with a person’s name and the number of documents where that name appears. And then the journalists started reading the documents and checking the role these people played, which took much more than a month. The result: they found 142 “staff” in Moscow. The authors of the investigation learnt that some of them had been previously convicted or detained under the drug abuse articles. Which made them essentially dependent on the cops and ready to confirm everything “that was necessary”. Finally, the journalists had “only” to find witnesses who would agree to talk. And they found them.
The first — Moscow — part of the investigation titled “I am a Witness!” Who Helps Cops Falsify Criminal Cases on Drug Abuses” by Alesya Marokhovskaya (IStories), Ivan Golunov, (Meduza) was released in February and already received a high rating from colleagues — the “Redkollegiya”award. One can also view its video version
So, here we will analyze and assess the second – Samara region – part of the story published at the end of March (authors Alesya Marokhovskaya, Irina Dolinina, IStories). Actually, it continues from the point at which the Moscow investigation ended. And as it is always the case with IStories one can not only read, but also watch the investigation, which makes the journalistic work even more convincing.
The Journalists of IStories went to Samara to study on the spot how another trial is going on. The trial is unique in its way, since not only six former drug control policemen are accused of planting drugs, torture, fraud, and framing up criminal cases for two years, from 2015 to 2017, but also 15 local residents – so called “staff” or rent-a-mob witnesses who helped falsify cases by acting as false witnesses and procurers are in the dock. All of them, in the words of one of the victims, as well as the victims themselves, are “expendable material” of the number games system designed to show “effectiveness” of the police and also used against the regime critics.
I Stories reminds us that in Russia, nearly half a million people were convicted of drug sales and possession in the five years from 2015 to 2019. This is the most massive article of the Criminal Code. Almost all of the victims of the “Samara case”, once detained by these operatives, are still serving prison terms. At the moment they are trying to prove that they confessed under threats and that the cases against them were framed up by policemen and so called “witnesses”. Journalists were able to speak both with those who have already served their term and now acting as victims and with those whose efforts put them in prison.
Oleg Pokashlev does not deny that he “occasionally used drugs”. He served his first term for car theft and worked as an electrician when he was arrested on drug charges. He tells the author of the investigation how he was detained. “When they take you there [to the police station], and there is no lawyer, no one — just a gang of five people — you know you won’t get out of there”, Pokashlev recalls. — I said: “Draw me up the first part of it (article 228.1 of the Criminal Code — illegal drug possession) and they draw up sales laughing: “We have nothing to do with possession. We either have sales or major sales”. Naturally, I will sign what they say, only in a smaller amount. Why? I’m a convicted felon. Otherwise, they’ll kick you and disfigure and you’ll sign not the first part [of article 228.1], but the third or the fourth (sale on a large or significant scale — Ed. note), or even the fifth (sale on an especially large scale — Ed. note).
Programming skills allowed the authors of the investigation to go beyond a single, albeit unique, criminal trial. After studying all the drug convictions in the Samara region, journalists discovered that the “staff” witnesses from the “Samara case” were only a small part of the system used by operatives throughout the region. Taking advantage of the fact that court clerks do not always remove witnesses» names from verdicts, the journalists analyzed documents with names and found 86 “regular” witnesses and buyers, who signed the protocols in 269 cases.
For the sake of clarity, the authors drew up a graph — a network of “staff” witnesses. Most of them turned out to be related to each other: their names appeared in various combinations in the documents of different defendants. One “record-breaker” was brought in by the cops about 50 times.
Journalists cite the version of the official “Samara case” investigators, according to which, in exchange for signatures in the protocols and the necessary testimony in court, the drug-dependent witnesses received money and drugs from the cops. In addition, in exchange for their services the police officers did not initiate criminal proceedings against them. The victims remember trying to draw the attention of the judges to the “strange” behavior of the witnesses. Thus, the mother of Alexander Sharomov, sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug trafficking, in her conversation with IStories mentioned how during the break in the session on her son’s case one of the witnesses, Alexey Mescheryakov, drank alcohol on the bench, fell asleep and fell on the floor. The defense counsel brought this “incident» to the attention of the judge, but the interrogation of the witness continued, and his testimony was accepted.
During the investigation the journalists failed to get an answer from the Kirov District Court as to why the judges were not confused by the same witnesses in different cases. And already after the story was released, they received the answer from the court: “The judge is not obliged to give any explanations on the merits of the cases considered or pending”.
On the contrary, Sergei Khranovsky, a former cop, now one of the defendants in the “Samara case”, preferred to explain himself to journalists, and emotionally. He didn’t deny that he used “professional tricks” while collecting materials on “these convicted persons”. He admitted falsifications, but stressed that “everyone who was detained is a huckster, a drug dealer, previously convicted of a bunch of crimes”. In his opinion, it is unreal to find “independent witnesses” in such cases, much less the buyers. Khranovsky, however, denied that the policemen intimidated the witnesses and never beat or tortured the detainees in order to make them sign confessions. “Only occasionally”, “like any other policeman”, he “would threaten a buyer to go and buy drugs from a suspect”. The victims, however, have a different opinion. Their testimony, available, as noted in the journalistic investigation at the disposal of IStories, indicates that their confessions were knocked out of them with beatings, a bag on their heads, and threats of rape with a baton.
Andrei Zlenko, a former police officer who is now on trial, assured IStories that such falsifications and the use of “regular” witnesses is common practice, but he and his colleagues were made scapegoats: “Yes, not everything was perfect with the documents then. Do you think they [the management] didn’t know about it? Everybody knew! All the bosses are happy now, and we are here in court to take the rap for them”.
The mentioned bosses, as well as the investigators at the time, are witnesses in the “Samara case”. In their testimony, the heads of the Samara department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs deny that any standards (plans for arrests) were set before the cops – no number games. Nobody forced them to tick the boxes. The bosses speak highly of the professionalism of their former subordinates insisting that the ministry was not aware of any falsifications.
And here’s how another defendant and former policeman Sergei Hranovsky describes his service in an interview with IStories: “The bosses demanded that every week we arrest the hustler… The one who did more is the best…The system ate itself up, represented by us… Never in my life will I go back to the police, because it’s all rotten… They make you tick the boxes every day… it doesn’t matter how — go do it”. “I went there as a young kid from a normal family, my relatives served in the police, — Hranovski continues. — Having served for the state, I broke my life.… And yes, I framed up the cases — let us be condemned for that! I want it to be over soon. I will take care of my children, so they don’t become drug addicts and never go to work for the police in their lives”…
Search technologies used by the authors: writing a script to work with big data; studying criminal case files and journalists own sources.
Techniques used: analysis of the received information and materials of the criminal case; a series of interviews with characters and experts.
