Krasnodar police officer confesses to leaking information to "Baza" employees

The head of the duty unit of the Krasnodar UMVD, Aleksandr Ablaev, pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe from reporters of the Telegram channel “Baza” and intends to testify.

As “Kavkazsky Uzel” reported, on July 22, security forces came to search the office of the Telegram channel “Baza”, editor-in-chief Gleb Trifonov was taken in for questioning, and later arrested in a case of bribery by a group of people. Searches in the case of police officers transferring information for publication on a Telegram channel were carried out, in particular, in the Krasnodar Territory. In Kuban and two other regions of Russia, police officers were detained for transferring information to “Baza” employees.

Today, the Moscow City Court considered the complaint against the arrest of the head of the duty unit of the Krasnodar UMVD Alexander Ablaev. The police officer agrees with the charge of receiving a bribe for passing official information to the employees of "Baza" and abuse of office.

"Ablaev admitted guilt and is ready to cooperate with the investigation," TASS quotes his lawyer as saying. 

Despite this, the court refused to release Ablaev from the pre-trial detention center; he was left in custody. On July 24, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow arrested him for 1 month and 27 days, the United Press Service of the Capital's Courts reported. 

In addition to Ablaev, two more employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are involved in the case - Sergei Kovalev from Krasnoyarsk and Alexander Selivanov from Belgorod. The day before, on August 7, the Moscow City Court considered an appeal against the arrest of Baza editor-in-chief Gleb Trifonov. The court refused to soften his preventive measure and left him in pretrial detention until September 20, RIA Novosti reported.

At the hearing on Trifonov's appeal, it was stated that Selivanov and Kovalev testified against him during confrontations - they stated that the Baza editor-in-chief was aware of their work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, RBC-Krasnodar notes.

Along with Trifonov, Baza employee Tatyana Lukyanova was arrested on charges of bribing security officials; the Moscow City Court will consider her appeal against the arrest on August 14. The journalists do not plead guilty. The channel's CEO, Anatoly Suleimanov, called the accusation that the editorial staff bought "leaks" from law enforcement agencies "nonsense."

* the activities of Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) are banned in Russia.