CHITA, October 19 (RIA Novosti) – Three Russian former police officers stand accused of stealing firearms from their local police depot in eastern Siberia after investigators compiled a case against them and submitted it to a court on Saturday.
In 2011, two police captains – the head of the reserve arms depot and the head of a police weapons workshop – took two hunting rifles from the depot that had been handed in to the police by their owners for temporary safekeeping, investigators in Russia's Zabaikalsky Region said. A third police officer provided illegal certificates for the weapons, they said.
One of the accused kept one of the rifles for himself, while the other officer involved in the theft sold the other gun to an acquaintance, investigators said.
A criminal case was opened on the basis of materials submitted by the regional police department, and all three officers were fired and now face up to 12 years in prison, investigators said.
