The jury has found the evidence gathered by the North Caucasus Federal District Main Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee enough to convict Sergey Tsapok, Nikolai Tsapok, Vyacheslav Tsepovyaz, Vladimir Zaporozhets, Vladimir Alekseyev and Igor Chernykh. They were found guilty of crimes under articles 209, 105, 162, 127, 167, 131, 222 of the RF Penal Code (banditry, murder, attempted murder, robbery, illegal deprivation of freedom, deliberate destruction and damage of another’s property, rape and illegal storage of firearms).
Two of the gang members Sergey Karpenko and Vitaly Ivanov have killed themselves, and two more Andrey Bykov and Vyacheslav Ryabtsev have already been sentenced to 20 years in prison each.
Investigators have done a large amount of work in Krasnodar Territory, the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania and other subjects of the Russian Federation. They have conducted over 2,000 questionings, over 50 examinations of crime scenes and areas, over 80 on-site checks of testimonies, over 600 forensic expert examinations, examined over 8,000 objects and documents, taken 70 samples for comparative analyses, made over 250 orders to inquiry bodies. There are 477 volumes in the criminal case.
Chairman of the Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin has been on the crime scenes several times, talked to the local people and at the first stage of the probe personally coordinated work of investigators. The local people began cooperating with investigators, only after they had believed that that time the law enforcement had seriously taken the gang in hand. Thanks to active and professional work of the investigating group, several members of the gang were identified only a few days later. It took investigators 10 days to detain the leader of the gang – Sergey Tsapok, and another 3 months to find and detain absolutely all members of the gang, including two active members extradited from Ukraine, where they had been hiding from justice. However, it turned out that the most difficult job had still to be done, as all the resources of lawyers, friends and relatives of the accused were involved. Using media and other factors, they tried to actively influence the investigating group and to discredit the work of the Russia’s Investigative Committee and its senior officials. The investigators realized perfectly that the lawyers would take advantage of any mistake or fault in the probe. Despite the psychological pressure, they scrupulously, maybe not so fast as somebody wanted, gathered and consolidated evidence against each participant of this brutal and cynical crime.
The investigators have found that it was Sergey Tsapok, who headed the gang acting in the village of Kushchevskaya, Krasnodar Territory over 10 years. In all, over the years while Tsapok’s gang acted in the village of Kushchevskaya - between 1998 and 2010 – its members killed 19 people and two more murders were not finished as in one case the victim had received timely medical aid and in the second the victim had managed to escape.
The court will pass a sentence based on the damning verdict.
The work of the Russia’s Investigative Committee finished the outrage of the gang in Kushchevsky district allowing the people to live and work peacefully.
Head of Media Relations V. I. Markin
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