The prosecution has requested a long prison sentence for the former head of the Shakhty court.

The prosecutor made a request to the former chairman of the Shakhty City Court in the Rostov Region.

As reported by "Caucasian Knot," in September 2024, the High Qualification Collegium of Judges approved the Investigative Committee to open a criminal case against Sergei Sham, who is suspected of committing a crime under three articles of the Criminal Code: fraud, official forgery, and issuing illegal sentences.

In the Oktyabrsky District Court of Rostov-on-Don, the state prosecutor requested an eight-year prison sentence for former Shakhty District Court Chairman Sergei Shama. "During the court debate, the state prosecutor proposed that the defendant Sergei Shama receive a final sentence of eight years' imprisonment in a general regime penal colony for all of his crimes, with a fine of 3 million rubles to the state," TASS reported, citing the joint press service of the Rostov Region courts.

The prosecutor requested prison terms ranging from 1 year and 1 month to 3.5 years for the remaining 13 defendants.

In September 2025, the court sentenced Natalya Demidova, a defendant in a housing fraud case in the Rostov region's mining areas, to six years in prison. She was part of a group led by Sergei Sham. In March 2026, the Rostov court sentenced another defendant in the case, A.V. Prudchenko, to seven years in prison and a fine of 500,000 rubles, according to RBC-Rostov.

Law enforcement officials believe the scheme to embezzle budget funds allocated for relocating residents of mining settlements from dilapidated housing operated from 2018 to 2021. According to investigators, the lawyer convinced elderly women they were entitled to social benefits for relocating from dilapidated housing. When the pensioners provided her with documents, the lawyer passed them on to a Shakhty city administration employee, who drafted the lawsuits and submitted them to the court for review. The lawsuits were ultimately submitted to Judge Sergei Sham, who granted them. In fact, the owners were not entitled to receive subsidies for improving their housing conditions, Kommersant-Rostov reports.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot", on April 7, the High Qualification Collegium of Judges sent materials to the Prosecutor General's Office for anti-corruption checks of four judges from Krasnodar Krai, including the daughter of the former chairman of the Krasnodar Krai Court, Alexander Chernov, and the sister of the former deputy chairperson of the same court, Elena Khakhaleva.

In August 2025, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia, the court confiscated assets worth 13 billion rubles from the former chairman of the Krasnodar Krai Court, Alexander Chernov. On January 30, the cassation court upheld the seizure of the property. Former judge of the Krasnodar Krai Court, Elena Khakhaleva, was placed on the international wanted list in connection with charges of fraud and official forgery. Investigators believe that in 2019, Khakhaleva went on business trips that she did not properly document, and her absences were considered absenteeism.