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The evidence collected by the Kurgan Regional Investigations Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation was found by court to be sufficient to sentence members of Dmitry Romanov's gang operating in Kurgan Region in 2006-2016. In spring of the current year the gang leader Dmitry Romanov and its active participant Alexander Afanasyev were sentenced to 24 and 19 years of imprisonment respectively as persons who signed immunity agreements pre-trial. Depending on the role of each the gang participants were found guilty of committing a number of especially grave offenses - five murders, several kidnappings, robberies and extortion of money from kidnapped persons, illegal storage of firearms, stealing of expensive cars.

As reported earlier, the gang was created by Dmitry Romanov in Kurgan Region in 2006. It included his acquaintance Kirill Ermolaev and Alexander Afanasyev he met while serving a prison sentence. The gang was aimed for systematic attacking entrepreneurs and wealthy citizens, seizing their property and murdering them. In summer of 2016 Romanov, Ermolaev and Afanasyev were detained by law enforcement officers for theft of expensive cars in Kurgan and Tyumen Regions, due to which the activities of the gang were suppressed and all the offences committed by the gang members remained unsolved.

Due to the systematic work of solving last year crimes using modern forensic methods the disclosure of illegal activities of the gang participants became possible. Thus, in 2019 investigators managed to identify genotype belonging to Kirill Ermolaev on one of pieces of material evidence collected in 2012 on site of discovery of a body of an entrepreneur Alexander Druzhkov in a garage. Investigation established that in the evening of December 6, 2021 upon arrival from work Druzhkov walked out of his car towards his house but didn't arrive there. Later it was established that on that moment three gang members (Romanov, Afanasyev and Ermolaev) were present in his yard. The perpetrators used a police uniform and, having mistaken the man for his brother, a successful entrepreneur, tricked him into a car, put handcuffs on him, and drove him to abandoned garages. After failed attempt to extort money the accused committed a murder of the man using a hammer. 1.5 months later the victim's body was accidentally found by local residents.

During long-term investigative activities Afanasyev disclosed a number of other especially grave offences against person committed by Romanov's gang in 2006-2016 in Kurgan and Sverdlovsk Regions including those committed with use of firearms. Apart from that Afanasyev indicated clandestine of a body of entrepreneur Vaganov who the gang members murdered in Sverdlovsk Region in 2011.

The gang leader Dmitry Romanov also confessed and disclosed a number of other impudent attacks. Romanov disclosed clandestine of a body of entrepreneur Andrey Mashin murdered by gang members in 2008 in Kurgan.

Apart from that the investigation solved a murder of Kurgan resident Zadriboroda aimed to seize his three-bedroom apartment and a number of thefts of expensive cars in Kurgan Region in 2014-2016 that had been unsolved for a long time.

The accused Kirill Ermolaev participated in the murders as part of the gang. The other for were invited by the group leader Romanov to participate in robberies and kidnappings on a one-time basis.

The court sentenced Kirill Ermolaev to lifetime imprisonment, four others were sentenced to 5-10 years of imprisonment in a strict regime penal colony.