The bribe size requested by the head of the Investigative Department of Moscow’s Tverskoy District Committee, Marat Tambiev, from Infraud Organization hackers, was 2718.6 BTC. This writes attorney Vadim Bagaturia, citing the testimony of one of the group’s members, Mark Bergman.
During questioning, he said that Tambiev proposed to Infraud Organization lawyer Roman Meyer to split all bitcoins currently held by the hackers equally in exchange for a promise not to freeze the remaining assets. The group members agreed to the deal.
“We checked all the information carriers seized from us and found that we owned 5212.9 BTC. We also had Dash cryptocurrency, which Tambiev did not divide, as it is less liquid, leaving it to us in full, but [took] for his own benefit part of the bitcoins, resulting in Tambiev receiving 2718.6 BTC as a bribe,” according to Bergman’s interrogation protocol.
He also added that the specified amount of bitcoins was transferred to Tambiev’s wallets on the night of January 21–22, 2022. Moreover, this occurred “not within investigative actions; no protocols were drawn up on this matter.”
However, in the indictment presented to the investigator, only 1032.1 BTC are listed.
Another 1032 BTC from the total, according to the version of sources of the Telegram channel VChK-OGPU, were sent to a certain “cold wallet”, accessible to employees of Directorate “K”, who took part in the searches.
Thus, if Bergman’s testimony and media reports are correct, 654 BTC have gone missing from the case. The fate of these funds is unknown at present.
Lawyer Vadim Bagaturia described this as “the most suspicious evidence the Prosecutor General’s Office relies on in pursuing Marat Tambiev over the bitcoins.”
Earlier, Bagaturia pointed to multiple inconsistencies in the handwriting expert analysis of notes found on the defendant’s computer.
Marat Tambiev is accused of receiving a bribe from members of the Infraud Organization for not freezing their assets.
According to the media, at the time of the arrest, the hackers provided access to ten crypto wallets holding proceeds from their activities, amounting to 2064 BTC in December 2021. Subsequently, all assets were withdrawn from the wallets.
As of now, Tambiev’s seized cryptocurrency, totaling 1032.1 BTC, sits in a wallet owned by the investigators.