A Belarusian foreman decided to help his subordinate Tajik — and accidentally ran into a Russian policeman who did not take a bribe
The shrewd policeman guessed that he would be offered money, so he turned on the video cameras in his office and waited.
Illustrative photo
The Boksitogorsk City Court of the Leningrad Region found Belarusian citizen A. Ramanenka guilty of preparing to give a bribe to a policeman. The story that led the Belarusian to the pre-trial detention center began with an attempt to help a Tajik worker who had to fly the next day for his son's birthday.
Ramanenka was born in Kazakhstan, holds Belarusian citizenship, and before his detention, worked as a foreman for the company "Tantal" in the Leningrad Region of Russia. He had no previous convictions and had not even been brought to administrative responsibility.
"Wanted to 'resolve the issue'"
It all started when the owner of an apartment in Boksitogorsk, where Tajik citizen A. Ergashev was temporarily registered, himself informed the police: the tenant was not actually living at the registration address. When the police arrived for a check, Ergashev "created the appearance of living" in the apartment, but eventually admitted that he had moved to a neighboring house.
For a foreigner in Russia, this is a violation of residence rules. And since Ergashev had already been fined for the same offense within a year, a repeat violation automatically entailed not only a fine but also forced expulsion from the country — though not immediately, but through a long deportation procedure. Meanwhile, the Tajik already had plane tickets purchased — he was going to fly home the next day for his son's birthday.
Ergashev called his boss Ramanenka and said he had been detained. As the worker himself later claimed, he did not ask for anything — he was confident that he would be released anyway. Everything that followed, according to him, was the personal initiative of the foreman.
Ramanenka managed to speak on the phone with the deputy head of the precinct police department, Senior Lieutenant S. Sviatlov, and said that he wanted to "resolve the issue". It was this phrase, as the policeman later recounted, that seemed suspicious to him — and before the meeting, he turned on the "Dazor" video recorder in his office.
"There are no bribes in Russia"
The conversation then unfolded like a textbook case. Ramanenka insisted that the violation was minor — the person lived in a neighboring house, was going to leave for his homeland anyway, and was very much needed at the construction site. The foreman offered to "pay a fine" — first 12–15 thousand Russian rubles, then 20 thousand rubles (about 230 euros) — but to pay them to the policeman personally, so that Ergashev would not be deported.
Sviatlov replied that it was a bribe and a criminal offense. To which Ramanenka, according to the policeman's testimony, objected: "There are no bribes in Russia" — and continued to talk about the "fine". Then the policeman stopped the conversation and reported to the duty unit.
A linguistic examination of the video recording confirmed: with the word "fine", Ramanenka disguised a reward for the policeman, "which does not need to be paid into the treasury", for not punishing and not deporting the Tajik.
Fine 12 times greater than the bribe
In court, Ramanenka fully admitted his guilt and repented. He explained that he had initially genuinely arranged to pay a regular fine, as he had done before, but then he "felt sorry" for the worker because of the tickets and his son's birthday. "He didn't think his actions would lead to such consequences," the court reported the defendant's words.
The court classified the act as preparation for giving a bribe to an official for knowingly illegal actions (Part 1, Art. 30, Part 3, Art. 291 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and imposed a fine of 250 thousand Russian rubles. Taking into account that the Belarusian spent a considerable time in the pre-trial detention center, the final amount was reduced to 100 thousand Russian rubles — about 1200 euros at the current exchange rate. Ramanenka was released from custody in the courtroom.
None of this helped the Tajik Ergashev: he was fined and deported from Russia.