Russian Criminal Case No. 144,128 - "The Putin Affair"

"while serving as the Chairman of the City’s Committee on Foreign Economic Relations he routinely took bribes. And I’ve spoken to many people myself who were a party to such transactions with him. You couldn’t establish a joint venture in the City without going through Putin, and you couldn’t go through him without paying a bribe".

Andrei Zykov, former senior investigator for special matters at the Investigation Department of the Interior Ministry


Eleven years ago, Russian prosecutors closed Criminal Case No. 144,128. The Russian blog ZAKS.ru has published an interview with the investigator who was in charge of the case that later became known as the  “the Putin affair”.

Investigators were in no doubt that the then-president was implicated in a number of crimes related to embezzlement of budget funds while he was serving in the government of the City of St. Petersburg.

An English version of the ZAKS.ru interview with senior investigator, Lt. Col. Andrei Zykov can be read here.